Migration in the Russian-Kazakh Border Region in 1992-2002

The article is devoted to migration from Central Asia to the Russian regions on the border with Kazakhstan in 1992-2002. The article aims to characterize migration processes in the regions of the Russian-Kazakh border in the first post-Soviet decade. The source base consists of documents from the State Archives of the Russian Federation (SARF), the United State Archives of the Chelyabinsk Region (USACR), and the results of the 1989 and 2002 censuses. Field materials collected by the author in the Chelyabinsk and Orenburg regions were of significant use. The Russian-Kazakh borderland was considered through the prism of a transnational approach. After the collapse of the USSR, the borderland appeared as a relatively integral locality, connected by a complex network of contacts and exchanges with Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, including both forced and labor migration. As a result, the number of permanently residing Tajiks has noticeably increased in all parts of the frontier on the Russian side. At the same time, migration links with other Central Asian states were uneven, which formed areas of concentration of Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in the Tyumen region, also in some parts of the Volga region, and Koreans – mainly in the Volgograd region. The presented material advances the field of migration and frontier studies, since the main trajectories of forced and labor migrations on the Russian section of the frontier are characterized, their ethnic structure in the regional dimension is revealed, and the formation and development of transnational communities is shown using biographical examples.