Emigration attitudes of young people in the northern and southern regions of Kazakhstan, depending on individual values

Abstract

The relevance of the problem is caused with the lack of comparative studies on the problem of emigration attitudes and their predictors in the context of the cultural characteristics of Kazakhstan regions. The article analyzes the research conducted, the purpose of which was to compare the severity of emigration attitudes determined by the individual values of Kazakhs depending on the region of residence, and the following hypotheses are put forward: 1. The degree of expressing emigration attitudes among the Kazakh youth from the northern regions is higher compared to the same of the southern regions; 2. The meta-values of Preservation and Self-overcoming are more signifi cant for the young people of Southern Kazakhstan (in comparison with Northern Kazakhstan); 3. The emigration attitudes of the youth in Northern Kazakhstan are associated with the meta-values of Willingness to change and Self-affi rmation; 4. The emigration attitudes of the youth of Southern Kazakhstan are associated with the metavalues of Preservation and Self-Overcoming. The study participants, including young people (N=364) aged from 17 to 35, where 78% (285) is represented by women, were examined using such methods as the “Scale of migration attitudes” (S.A. Kuznetsova, I.Yu. Kuznetsov, A.V. Feshchenko), modifi ed into the “Scale of emigration attitudes”, which allows to identify the degree of severity of emigration attitudes; PVQ-21-ESS7 that is the version of a questionnaire for measuring individual values (Sh. Schwartz), aimed at studying the signifi cance of values, and the method of multiple linear regression analysis, the Student›s t-test. It is revealed that the Kazakhs of the northern regions of Kazakhstan (compared with the Kazakhs of Southern Kazakhstan) have more pronounced emigration attitudes, the importance of the Self-affi rmation metavalue is higher, emigration attitudes are positively associated with the Willingness to change meta-value; among the Kazakhs of Southern Kazakhstan (in comparison with the Kazakhs of Northern Kazakhstan), the meta-value of Preservation is of great importance, emigration attitudes are negatively associated with the meta-value of Self-overcoming; the meta-value of Self-overcoming is equally signifi cant for both the Kazakhs of the northern and the southern regions; emigration attitudes of the Kazakhs of both the southern and northern regions are negatively associated with the meta-value of Preservation and are positively associated with the meta-value of Self-Affi rmation. The obtained research results can be used in forecasting the migration behavior of Kazakh youth, as well as in the process of realizing a program “Rukhani Zhangyru – Public Consciousness Modernization” in Kazakhstan.