Elite Students in Kazakhstan: Complexities of the Internet and the International Arena

Rising elites in Kazakhstan are embedded in the world of the internet, stimulating comparisons of narratives from domestic and web-based international sources. It is these young elites who will in the future be sitting across the tables of international negotiation: political, economic, and cultural. To define and map how these future leaders view the world is the principal question of this study, and to that end, focus groups were arranged at the country’s most elite university. The young elites, completing a respected university, grapple with defining questions: are they East or West; should their families make decisions for them, as tradition dictates; should they become more strictly Muslim or follow the Kazakh way of easygoing habits from their nomadic past, and where in the international arena do they fit? Focus groups provide a singular advantage: showing not only what participants think, but why they think as they do. The chapter concludes with the new generation of elites’ values toward religion, the family, and selected countries in the international system.