Centering Youth to Re-envision Social Capital Theory: Life Stories of Kazakhstani youth from Rural or Lower Socioeconomic Backgrounds

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Handing over the Mic: Centering Youth Voices in Research and Practice

Proposal

Social capital critically shapes employment opportunities and social mobility of youth. Little is known, however, about how marginalized youth use social capital to pursue education and career aspirations, particularly in countries with developing higher education systems. Drawing on life history narratives of 20 prestigious university graduates from rural or lower socioeconomic backgrounds in Kazakhstan, my research examines how the graduates use social capital in pursuing their education and career.
Half of the population of Kazakhstan was born after the Soviet Union collapsed: those under 29 comprise 51% of the population (Laruelle, 2019). Despite being the majority population, research on youth in Kazakhstan in particular, and in post-Soviet contexts generally, has not included marginalized youth’s voices to understand their lived experiences. The majority of research on youth in Kazakhstan remains limited to studying or surveying youth not centering youth voices (Abdiraiymova et al., 2016; Junisbay & Junisbay, 2019; Shnarbekova, 2018).

As an example of intergenerational research with youth, this study demonstrates the significance of facilitating interaction and mutual exchange and development with youth participants for successful co-construction of narratives. Specifically, through critical reflexivity and consideration of power dynamics in building relationships with my participants, I made a concerted effort to walk alongside participants rather than telling a narrative for my participants. By centering youth in this study, I was able to provide a nuanced understanding of not only how youth navigated inequity barriers in the education system in navigating their pathways through university admission, completion and early career, but also why these inequities matter to them in the first place. I demonstrate how through immersing myself in personal narratives of my participants, I found that social capital theory in its current theorization only partially explains their exceptional education and career pathways. Through my deep engagement with my participants’ stories and critical reflexivity, I came to reconsider the explanatory power of Western-centric social capital theory in my own life leading to epistemological liberation. This epistemological liberation led me to re-envision social capital theory. Therefore, I argue that centering youth voices in research is essential for both challenging the dominant theoretical frameworks and exposing complex processes of transnational mixing; thus, moving beyond East-West dichotomy in knowledge production. The study findings also have important implications for stakeholders in the post-Soviet context and beyond, including educators, policy makers, researchers, parents, and students. By centering youth, the study sheds light on the circumstances that may help improve higher education retention, graduation, and employment of youth from marginalized backgrounds.

Author

• Zhuldyz Amankulova, University of Minnesota