"Everything is in my own hands" : examining the aspirations of Kazakhstani high school students in times of neoliberal uncertainty /

Open in iSearch

Student Theses

2022

Baimaganbetova, Shynar

Thesis

Youth aspirations have become a research and policy concern with strengthening neoliberal governance in advanced and emerging economies. Kazakhstan, a leading economic player in Central Asia, seeks to gain a stronger foothold in the global market by reconfiguring its economy from a resource-based to a knowledge-based model by 2050. Perhaps the most telling illustration of this commitment is the large-scale education reform intending to advance the quality of human capital in Kazakhstan. Although much effort has been invested in producing competitive future workers, their aspirations remain underinvestigated. Drawing on Foucault’s perspective of the neoliberal subject and Bourdieu’s concepts of capital, habitus, and field, this qualitative case study examined how students approaching the transition from school to college or university envisioned their futures. Overall, 29 high school students were selected from two public schools in Almaty, one using Russian and the other Kazakh as the medium of instruction. Data were derived from sociodemographic surveys, individual and group interviews, aspirational maps, supplementary student materials, classroom observations, and photographs. The findings highlight three interrelated themes. First, the multiplicity of envisioned futures reflected the growing possibility of making choices. While the students projected their future as an array of prospects at their fingertips, neoliberal uncertainty framed those options. Second, the perceptions of the future were deeply embedded in agentic reasoning, postulating that everyone had equal opportunities to attain their aspirations irrespective of their backgrounds. Sociocultural factors, however, structured the landscape of youth possibilities and limitations. Third, the recent education reform radically transformed the participants’ everyday lives and contributed to their perceptions of their schools as obstructions rather than bridges to the future. Despite failing as a platform for producing competitive human capital, the schools instilled essential neoliberal dispositions of self-reliance, adaptability, and responsibility in the students. These insights enable an understanding of aspirational construction as a complex exercise shaped by the agency-structure dialectic that simultaneously empowers and constrains youth in Kazakhstan. The findings extend the theorization of youth aspirations beyond the Global North and have significant implications for researchers, educators, and policymakers engaged with youth and education reform in post-Soviet settings affected by authoritarian practices and neoliberal agendas

LG51.H43 Dr 2022eb Baimaganbetovas

https://educoll.lib.eduhk.hk/records/o6nOnSVh