Collaborative Research: Networks, Culture, and the Migration Decision-Making Process: A Case Study of the Kazakh Diaspora in Western Mongolia

Texas A&M Research Foundation, College Station TX

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Cynthia Werner and Dr. Holly Barcus will collaborate to study the process by which potential migrants make the decision to move or not, through a case study of Kazakh migration from Mongolia to Kazakhstan. The decision to migrate represents a complex interplay of individual perceptions, needs, and desires, coupled with having the necessary resources and the real or perceived benefits offered at the destination. The process by which potential migrants decide to move or not to move thus is dependent upon economic, cultural, social, familial, and cognitive factors as well as broader national and global contexts in which these decisions are made. This project addresses three inter-related questions: 1) How and to what degree do cultural factors influence the migration decision-making process? 2) How does gender shape migration decisions and migration impacts? 3) What role do kin-based social networks play in the migration process, and how are kin-based social networks maintained in a transnational context? The Kazakhs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people, are the largest minority group in Mongolia. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Mongolian Kazakhs started to migrate to the newly independent Republic of Kazakhstan, a location now imagined as their homeland. While approximately one-half of the 120,000 Kazakhs in Mongolia migrated to Kazakhstan, as many as one-third later returned to Mongolia. To investigate migration decision making, Werner and Barcus will gather data by conducting structured interviews with 120 Kazakh individuals in Mongolia, and in-depth life history and family history interviews with 24 households. Using a mixed method approach, the research design combines the strengths of quantitative and qualitative methods. Research participants will be identified through local contacts using a quota sample stratified by geography, migrant status, gender, and age. The field research will take place during the summers of 2008 and 2009. Previously, researchers have documented the dynamics of migration flows and counter-flows and the expected timing of migration events over an individual's lifetime. But this research has been focused almost exclusively on positive migration decisions, neglecting the decision not to migrate. From the standpoint of United States migration policy, the decision not to move is as important as the decision to move. Werner and Barcus will investigate the possibility that cultural factors play a pivotal role in determining the outcome of migration decisions. Cultural factors have not received adequate attention in previous studies, which have tended to rely heavily or exclusively on quantitative data. This research will contribute to filling this gap and to the interdisciplinary scientific analysis of migration decision-making, with special focus on immobility and place attachment, gender and transnational migration, social networks and remittances, and migration in post-Soviet settings. By engaging undergraduate and graduate students in their research, the researchers also will contribute to science education in the United States and in Mongolia