Award Information
In this dissertation, I will explore the processes of de-territorialization and reterritorialization of ethno-national identity, homeland attachment, and the construction of transnational identities among second and third generation diaspora communities. This project focuses on the Mongolian-Kazakh diaspora, thereby constituting a comparative study requiring fieldwork in Kazakhstan, where returnees will be studied, and western Mongolia, where those choosing not to repatriate to the newly independent Kazakh homeland will be studied. Such research is significant not only to scholarly understanding of the relationship between territory, identity, and homeland psychology, but to the political development and civil stability of Kazakhstan, where Kazakh ethnodemographic predominance has only recently come to fruition and the state's multi-ethnic minority populations are reevaluating their future in an independent "land of the Kazakhs".