The aim is an interdisciplinary research of Ethnic Kazakh repatriates’s everyday life, needs, interests, living at the microlevel to understand the adaptive strategies, practices they use to integrate into the political-legal, economic, socio-cultural systems of Kazakh society, including the historical, cultural, socio-economic of Zhetysu region’s specifics

Objectives of the project:

1. Study of theoretical and methodological approaches: This task involves reviewing existing literature and analyzing media and social networks to explore adaptation and integration phenomena. Measurable outcomes include systematizing theoretical and methodological approaches, conducting a literature review, and identifying public discourse on adaptation and integration issues faced by returnees.
2. Analysis of legal and institutional contexts: This task focuses on studying the legal framework related to the adaptation and integration of repatriates, such as citizenship, access to public services, housing, employment, and education. Key indicators include the number of expert interviews conducted and the analysis of relevant legal documents and regulations.
3. Research of the daily life of repatriates through field research: Ethnographic expeditions will be conducted in the Zhetysu region. The research includes participant observations, sociological surveys, focus groups, and interviews with returnees and experts. Measurable outcomes include the number and quality of interviews, focus group discussions, participant coverage, and the creation of a database of new empirical data on the daily life of ethnic returnees.
4. Exploration of economic integration strategies: This task examines repatriates’ participation in the local labor market, analyzing barriers to their economic integration and exploring their adaptive strategies. Measurable outcomes include identifying economic adaptive strategies, assessing labor and professional self-realization, evaluating the material well-being of repatriate families at the time of arrival and currently, and analyzing the development of economic interaction skills in the local market.
5. Identification of socio-cultural adaptation strategies: This task focuses on understanding the socio-cultural strategies used by repatriates to integrate into the local society. Measurable outcomes include identifying strategies for positive interaction with the local population, revealing the formation of social ties and communication networks, assessing the acceptance of local social norms and cultural practices, and identifying linguistic and psychological adaptation challenges.
6. Evaluation of adaptive strategies’ effectiveness: This task assesses the effectiveness of repatriates’ adaptive strategies, considering the historical, cultural, and socio-economic specifics of the Zhetysu region. Measurable outcomes include creating a database on adaptive behaviors, evaluating the success of different strategies, identifying the most effective adaptation practices, and forming recommendations for local governments and migration services.
7. Approbation of research results

The idea of the project:

This project aims to fill in the existing gaps, giving a more complete picture of how returnees lead their daily lives and cope with the difficulties that arise. In addition, a comparative analysis of the experience of adaptation and integration of repatriates who arrived in various periods of the history of independent Kazakhstan will be conducted in order to gain an idea of the dynamics of changes in their lives in the conditions of the post-Soviet transformation process. The study of the adaptive strategies of repatriates in this context will reveal the features that distinguish this region from others and deepen the understanding of local integration practices.

Expected results:

As a result of the project, the following results will be achieved:

• new socio-humanitarian knowledge will be obtained in the field of research on the processes of adaptation and integration of ethnic repatriates in post-Soviet Kazakhstan;
• The legal and institutional contexts of adaptation and integration of ethnic repatriates in the field of housing will be analyzed, including issues of obtaining citizenship, access to public services, the right to housing, labor, education, health care in a particular region of Kazakhstan;
• A database of new empirical data on daily life, adaptive strategies and practices of economic, legal, socio-cultural integration of ethnic repatriates in the field of housing and communal services will be created;
• The main barriers and challenges hindering the adaptation processes, as well as factors and mechanisms contributing to the integration of ethnic returnees into the host society will be identified;
• The assessment and causality of the effectiveness of the strategies used by ethnic returnees in everyday life will be carried out;
• The most successful practices of adaptation of repatriates to the social, cultural, economic and legal reality in the field of housing will be identified;
• A scientific and practical basis will be formed for the development of recommendations on working with ethnic repatriates for local executive bodies and migration services of the Zhetysu region.
• The results of the project will be published:

1) at least 2 (two) articles or reviews in a peer-reviewed scientific publication indexed in the Social Science Citation Index and included in the 1st (first) or 2nd (second) quartile by impact factor in the Web of Science database and (or) having a CiteScore percentile in the Scopus database of at least 50 (fifty);

2) at least 4 (four) articles and (or) reviews in peer-reviewed foreign and (or) native publications recommended by the Committee for Quality Assurance in Science and Higher Education;

3) at least one (1) monograph recommended by the Academic council of the university and published in a Kazakh publishing house.

• As a result of the project, 1 (one) Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in the field of social sciences and humanities will be trained.