Post-Communist youth: is there a Central Asian pattern?

Abstract

This article argues that Central Asian youth share more commonalities than differences vis-à-vis young people in other ex-Communist countries. The common features include high rates of unemployment and under-employment, associated poverty and a propensity to become pendulum migrants. Meanwhile, as elsewhere, rates of participation in higher education have risen spectacularly in parts of Central Asia. Central Asia has been part of a global trend towards later marriages and lower rates of fertility, although the region's young people still tend to marry earlier and parent more children than in other parts of the ex-USSR. As elsewhere, Central Asian youth have lost most of the provisions for leisure activities formerly offered by state and Communist Party organizations. These have been replaced by relatively patchy provisions by NGOs, and commercial facilities that are beyond the means of most young people. The article argues that the most distinctive feature of youth in Central Asia is citizenship in newly independent states with no prior history of statehood, hence their difficulties in achieving a collective identity. This has created a metaphorical market place in identities. What young people share with youth throughout East-Central Europe and Eurasia is a dominant personal aspiration; namely, to join their countries' new middle classes.

Keywords:

• education
• labour markets
• leisure
• politics
• youth