‘Rightful’ versus ‘real’ homelands: changing concepts of Kyrgyz boundaries and belonging on the China-Kyrgyzstan frontier

Abstract

The collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s brought statehood to peoples in the Central Asian borderlands at the interface between the former Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. In the past two decades, the cautious opening of this once tightly sealed border has led to renewed contact between individuals of the groups sharing the ‘Kyrgyz’ ethnonym with other individuals from homologous groups who are now citizens of Kyrgyzstan, China (Xinjiang Autonomous Region) and Tajikistan. This article focuses on how Kyrgyz groups beyond the territorial borders of their respective states regard their belonging to a wider Kyrgyz nation. Based on data gathered in anthropological fieldwork, I discuss these groups’ respective notions of meken (homeland) and chek-ara (borders) and place such narratives of inclusion and exclusion amongst Kyrgyz groups alongside local rhetoric of ethnic ascription, group affiliation and citizenship, and boundary marking in these borderlands.