Yerkebulan Sairambay, Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI Essen)

This blog entry focuses on the collection and availability of research data in Kazakhstan, a country in which the author has conducted several research projects. It discusses how digitalisation is making data increasingly available, while authoritarian governance is nevertheless making it challenging to conduct fieldwork and collect research data in the region.

In this short piece, I will discuss issues of data availability and collection in the Central Asian region, particularly Kazakhstan, within the current political context. Specifically, I will share how I collected data for my master’s (2017), doctoral (2019-2021), and postdoctoral projects, as well as other research projects during my research career. I have used mixed methods, including paper and online surveys (Qualtrics), interviews, focus groups, content analysis, and omnibus surveys. One fact is clear from my experience: Kazakhstanis trust your research and you personally more, especially on socio-political issues, if you have so-called “official” grounds for your research. This could be a reference letter from your university or institution, but it is much better if you also have local affiliation and endorsements with signatures and seals. In my case, I had endorsements both from my British (Glasgow, Cambridge) and local Kazakhstani (M. Auezov South Kazakhstan State University) universities.

More and more universities in Central Asia are implementing ethical procedures in research, and this can be important when conducting socio-political research in the region. In addition to obtaining ethical approval, it is essential to consider risks and have mitigation plans to ensure the safety of not only study participants but also the researchers themselves. Furthermore, ideally, at least one or two people should be familiar with your fieldwork itinerary and maintain contact with you throughout the study for your own safety.

Conducting research, especially analytical work, often requires scholars studying one Central Asian country to also examine other countries of the region, at least for the purposes of literature review, checking data availability, and comparisons. This is why, throughout my career, although I have focused primarily on Kazakhstan, I have also interacted with the other four countries. While the availability and collection of data for socio-political research in Central Asia has improved over the past decade, scholars still face significant structural, political, and methodological limitations. Conducting field research on socio-political issues in Central Asia is fraught with many challenges such as self-censorship among respondents, restricted access to officials, and gatekeeping by institutions. For example, research on corruption, elections, and protests can attract the attention of central and/or local authorities in the region, potentially resulting in increased monitoring, questioning, restrictions on research activities, administrative penalties, or, in some cases, detention.

All five Central Asian states inherited a legacy of Soviet-era government statistics. While Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are commonly characterised as authoritarian to varying degrees, there is substantial variation in their political systems, levels of state control, and openness to research and public scrutiny. These differences shape both the availability of data and the conditions under which research can be conducted across the region. Kazakhstan, compared to its neighbouring countries, has a number of advantages for socio-political research, such as a more developed institutional infrastructure (e.g., KIMEP, Nazarbayev University), as well as the fact that 93.8% of the population uses the Internet with varying frequencies: daily (76.4%), several times a week (8.5%), several times a month (3.5%), and rarely (5.4%). However, the recent democratic backsliding in Kazakhstan, occurring in parallel with Russia’s influence, may still pose challenges for research, for example, in the field of queer studies. While Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are generally considered the most accessible for political and social science research, Uzbekistan has become more accessible since 2016 (post-Karimov era) but remains selective. Politically sensitive work remains difficult to conduct in Tajikistan, while Turkmenistan is among the most closed research environments not only in the region but also in the world.

Based in Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan), Central Asia Barometer was one of the most respected public opinion research institutes in Central Asia, but it suspended all operations in December 2024 “due to the growing insecurity and challenges in conducting ethical survey research in the region.” Central Asia Barometer conducted nationally representative public opinion surveys across Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, measuring citizens’ attitudes toward politics, governance, economic conditions, foreign relations, and other issues of public interest. The resulting survey data are publicly available through the Discuss Data repository, providing scholars with access to Waves 1-9 (2017-2021). Scholars could also procure answers to their own research questions, for instance, through omnibus surveys of Central Asia Barometer. For example, one such dataset I commissioned for my research was later published ‘Open Access’ on Discuss Data.

Due to uneven domestic transparency in Central Asia, scholars often use external datasets such as ACLED, Eurasia Barometer, Freedom House, KonKoop, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), and World Values Survey. One of the original datasets on protests of various categories, such as “governance and politics” and “rights and freedoms”, about the region is the Central Asia Protest Tracker, compiled by the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs. The Oxus Society has created another brilliant dataset called the Central Asia Resource Tracker, which “maps the existing reserves, production, processing, and export of natural resources, including over 100 different minerals, hydrocarbons, chemicals, industrial materials, and agricultural products.”

One issue could be regional inequalities in data quality, with urban areas such as Almaty, Astana, Tashkent, and Bishkek being much easier for fieldwork than rural areas. Digital research on socio-political topics is undoubtedly growing, especially among social media users and younger generations. Here growing internet penetration in Central Asia, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, might facilitate such research, but the quality of such infrastructure varies significantly across the region.

Overall, data availability and collection in Kazakhstan and Central Asia are improving thanks to digital technologies, open databases, international collaboration, and growing internet penetration, as well as an increase in high-quality research conducted by local scholars along with foreign researchers. However, authoritarian governance, uncertainty caused by geopolitical tensions, and self-censorship around socio-political issues continue to shape both data availability and the reliability of fieldwork findings in the region.

 

About the author

Yerkebulan Sairambay is a Cambridge-educated scholar at risk and currently an Academy in Exile Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI Essen) in Germany. His research interests involve, but are not limited to, the following areas of expertise: political participation, new media, civil society, climate change, clan politics, democratisation, queer studies, academic freedom, transitional justice, and nation- and state- building with a particular focus on the countries of post-communist Europe and former Soviet Union. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge, and IMRCEES Erasmus Mundus Master’s Double Degrees in Russian, Central and East European studies (University of Glasgow) and political science (Corvinus University of Budapest).