Kazakhstan’s returnees frustrated by cold shoulders
ALMATY (TCA) — Despite the official welcome policy of Kazakhstan’s authorities, ethnic Kazakhs that have returned to their historical homeland from neighboring countries experience hardships and often face unwelcome attitudes from the local population. We are republishing this article on the issue, written by Almaz Kumenov, originally published by Eurasianet: The joy that Tursynzhan Yesenalyuly felt in moving to his ethnic homeland of Kazakhstan from China four years ago wore off pretty quickly. Yesenalyuly, 44, lives with his three-year-old daughter in a cramped rented house in the village of Teskensu, around 80 kilometers east of Almaty, the business capital. “I have no property, no job and no support. I need food and clothing for my child. This wasn’t what I dreamed about when I returned to the land of my forefathers. And this is decidedly not what Kazakhstan’s authorities promised us,” Yesenalyuly told Eurasianet. In the immediate wake of independence, Kazakhstan emulated the experience of countries like Israel by flinging its doors open to ethnic kinfolk dispersed around the surrounding region. Ever since, however, the arriving migrants – known as Oralman, from the Kazakh word for returnees – have faced a battle for acceptance and have often struggled to prosper. But their complaints about lack of support from the government get short shrift from many who feel Oralmans have been given too many handouts. The bulk of ethnic Kazakh communities abroad are the descendants of people who fled their native land around the start of the Soviet experiment, when political unrest, repression, forced collectivization and famine prevailed. The main destinations were China, other republics of Central Asia and Mongolia. When the right-of-return program was enacted in the early 1990s, there were several urgent goals in mind. Anuar Galiyev, a history professor at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, explained that the dissolution of the Soviet Union sparked a mass flight of ethnic Russians, leading to a demographic collapse. New people were desperately needed to make up the numbers. Another core, if often unspoken, notion was that the proportion of ethnic Kazakhs as a percentage of the broader population should increase. Under the last census to be carried out in Soviet times, ethnic Kazakhs accounted for less than 40 percent of the total population of what was then the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. According to official figures, more than 1 million have to date seized the opportunity to resettle in Kazakhstan, mainly coming from China and Uzbekistan. The thought in the early 1990s was that arriving migrants could be resettled in sparsely populated rural locations and be put to work in underdeveloped sectors of the economy. Another history professor, Gulnara Mendikulova, told Eurasianet that the demand was mainly for people able to work on the land and raise livestock. Yesenalyuly indeed had a background in agriculture, although since moving to Kazakhstan he has made his paltry income mainly from working on building sites and he has been unable to find a permanent position. One major problem is that he is unable to speak...
