Lecture | Lunch Research Seminar
Break for Landlocked: Migration Policy Reform in Kazakhstan
- Date
- Thursday 20 March 2025
- Time
- Address
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 2.02
Registration
All are welcome, however please register in advance at l-peg@hum.leidenuniv.nl to receive a copy of the paper and lunch.
Abstract
As the place of the Belt and Road Initiatives announcement, Kazakhstan is China's first westward opening destination, hosting many infrastructure projects invested in and built by Chinese state-owned companies. The deepening cooperation between China and its northwestern frontier neighbor in the past decade brought prosperity in cross-border mobility. Yet, this border was highly securitized due to its historical legacy, and mobility used to face barriers due to security concerns. Such a situation suddenly changed in 2019. Out of the need for domestic reform and changes in the external environment, Kazakhstan implemented opening strategies to attract international capital, adjust its position as a middle power, and the bridge between Eastern Asia and Europe.
This chapter focuses on reforming migration governance in Kazakhstan, which is increasingly a crossroads of migration on the Eurasian continent. Using policy analysis research methods, including case studies and interviews, this part attempts to explore how Kazakhstan, as a landlocked country between two big powers, China and Russia, is leveraging immigration policies to achieve its goal of attracting international visitors as the step for its ambition to break the landlocked bottleneck for its next-level development. How did the country reform its migration governance in line with global practice while transiting from the Soviet legacy of mobility control? It also explores how society reacts to such transformation, especially with its eastern neighbor.