Kyrgyz Cyber Diaspora: Posing the Issue and the Views of Migrants

Abstract

The article discusses the part that interactive communications have come to play in the everyday life of Kyrgyz migrants as well as the relationships emerging between online and offline communities. The study was drawn on 44 in-depth interviews that I conducted among migrants in the cities of Cheliabinsk and Ekaterinburg either directly or remotely, and WhatsApp communications with respondents from the cities of Moscow and Krasnoyarsk in Russia and the Osh region in Kyrgyzstan (30 men and 14 women of various ages from 18 to 47). The methodological use of conceptual frameworks of transnationalism and cyberethnography was instrumental in analyzing the activities of migrants in social networks and messengers and helped understanding the situation from inside, trying to better grasp migrants’ own perspectives on whether they think of themselves as of part of a cyber diaspora. Despite the limited scope of the study, it is meant to make a valuable contribution to the ongoing research on Central Asian migrants and their use of interactive technologies.