Roberts, Ken. "Post-Communist youth: is there a Central Asian pattern?". Central Asian Survey, vol.29, no.4 (2010): 537-549.

Roberts, Ken. "Post-Communist youth: is there a Central Asian pattern?". Central Asian Survey, vol.29, no.4 (2010): 537-549.

• The distinctive features of youth in Central Asia are high levels of unemployment and underemployment and intensification and spread of poverty since the collapse of the USSR despite high rates of graduation from higher education. Youth in Central Asia are also distinguished from youth in other former Soviet countries in that they tend to get married younger and have more children than other post-Soviet youth, although they still fall within trends of declining birthrates (537).
• All Central Asian countries experienced periods of precipitous economic decline in the early and mid 1990s as the Soviet economic system collapsed, but despite most countries having now surpassed their 1991 GDP levels, the benefits of economic growth have resulted in increased living standards for permanently employed persons -- usually with jobs from before the collapse of the USSR -- rather than a decline in unemployment or underemployment (538).
• Under the Soviet system factories were scattered through-out the countryside, in a way that provided for more robust employment, but has unproductive. As the states transitioned to market systems, many of this units of rural industrialization vanished. Additionally the Soviet system stressed full employment, resulting in unproductive use of personnel. The first market reforms were often shedding of unproductive jobs, resulting in a large pool of unemployed persons which has decreased little since independence (538).
• In Central Asia these trends have been especially pronounced as these were among the poorer of the Soviet republics. In all five republics, deurbanization has occurred with more of the population working in agriculture. The change in the Kyrgyz Republic has an increase from 27% of the workforce to almost 50% in 2000 (538).
• The employment conditions in contemporary Central Asia may be better characterized by underemployment than by unemployment. "People may not be starving, but many are chronically short of cash". The lack of sustainable work has resulted in a large informal economy of temporary work on houses or household farms, likely making up 20% or more of all real economic activity (539).
• Differences in employment available and income levels are stark between populations. It is common knowledge among Uzbekistani, Tajikistani, and Kyrgyz youth that jobs around Almaty or in the Caspian oil fields will earn four-times the salary as local employment. After this many youth then turn to employment opportunities in Moscow or other industrial areas in Russia or the CIS (539).
• However, jobs in the petrochemical sector can never make up more than 1 or 2% of all employment, and poverty remains common even around Almaty. Most immigrants and many nationals are still forced to go outside of Central Asia for meaningful employment (539).
• One of the trends within youth immigration in Central Asia has been a tendency for national minority groups -- especially Russians -- to be forced to move into countries where they are the major due to high unemployment and an inability to speak the local language (540).
• Central Asians are likely to be 'pendulum migrants', moving first to Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkey or Middle Eastern states for employment with the plan to return when conditions have been improved, and then developing social connections while there to point that both the original country and the work country become 'home'. In the post-Soviet world this dual life is seen as a 'normal' strategy for ensuring livelihood (540).
• Despite its commonality, most workers to other post-Soviet states are not there legally. It is significantly easier to acquire travel visas then work visas, meaning many migrants seek informal and illegal work. This leaves them open to exploitation and they are paid less than local laborers. They may also face threats of physical violence from unemployed locals (540).
• It must take a significant moral toll on Central Asia youth to be employed in these conditions in post-Soviet countries. They are almost all university-educated and work jobs for which they are over-qualified, under-paid, and face open discrimination compared to locals. They only remain in such work because it supports their families back home (540).
• Some of the significant factors continuing to drive high participation rates in higher education are still economic: beliefs that qualifications will prepare them for more advanced employment, despite the fact that these jobs in the 'knowledge economy' rarely exist in Central Asia (541).
• This is not the case in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, where the governments have kept tight controls over the number of individuals admitted to higher education to maintain higher quality of resources. Both of these countries have also seen the continuation of technical and vocational education (degrees in tractor manufacturing) common in Soviet Union which have disappeared elsewhere with deindustrialization (541).
• Despite recognition that degrees are often considered meaningless by employers without additional experience, most Central Asian youth believe in there value within the labour market. Generally being a student is also considered more acceptable than being unemployed, meaning enrollment may be a strategy to prevent official employment for 4 more years (542).
• Unlike youth in the West, where acquiring a private and separate dwelling is considered an element of adulthood, youth in Central Asia and the post-Soviet world in general continue living with parents or older relatives and gradually transition into a relationship of caregiving for the older relative (542).
• Partially this is simply because renting accommodation is an option for most Central Asians. There is a minimal property market, with few owning a residence they are not currently occupying, and rents would be too high to most youth. Additionally the lack of a market in capital means that acquiring loan is not practical (542).
• The continued presence of older relatives, usually parents, in the residence through-out life and after marriage leads to a greater perpetuation of traditional social values and gender roles than exists in the West (543). 
• There are a number of reasons why multi-generational living arrangements are beneficial for all involved, but the reality remains that they are universally common because youth have no other options (543).
• Central Asian youth are marrying and having children later in life, but still much earlier than populations in the rest of the Soviet Union. The change is really that most youth are marrying in their early 20s rather than their teens, and having children in their mid or late 20s rather than in their early 20s. Birth rates still exceed the replacement rate, although they are declining steadily (543).
• One of the most useful skills among youth transferred from Communism to post-Communism is the ability to engage in leisure activities without spending money. Outside of the nouveu rich class in capital cities, participation in commercial leisure activities such as sports, drinking, clubbing, or movies is uncommon. Instead leisure activities largely consist of watching television, hanging out in shared spaces, loitering, and strolling (543).
• Leisure activities still consume large amounts of time in Central Asia, as the situation of underemployment leaves plentiful time for relaxation among all age groups, but especially youth. As a result, just 'hanging about' is seen as a standard societal activity not associated with laziness (544).
• Interaction between the sexes is less free than elsewhere in the Western world or the former Soviet Union. Social groups are very often sex segregated and do not merge into mixed-sex crowds from which couples then emerge. Serial partnerships and cohabitation have not been normalized, and courtship practices remain frozen – much as they were in the West in the pre-contraceptive pill era. The availability of those factors of cell phone communication and contraceptives demonstrate that Central Asian society remains very conservative on these issues of sex and relationships (544).
• Many of the factors which contributed to the growth of nationalism and self-identification in other parts of the Soviet Union were absent in Central Asia. "The post-Soviet Central Asian republics did not gain independence as a result of struggles that might have begun to merge the various ethnic groups into Kazakhstanis, Uzbekistanis and so on. Independence was not sought, but thrust upon the republics when Russia unilaterally dismantled the Soviet Union in 1991" (544).
• This is demonstrated by the general lack of ethnic violence within states despite an extremely diverse ethnic makeup. The clashes in the Farg'ona Valley did not led to larger ethnic conflict, and, with the exception of Russians, the Central Asian republics did not see a mass emmigration of minorities to their titular republics (545).
• All governments in the region have embarked on nation-building projects, but have done so cautiously, well aware that their policies may prove divisive rather than unifying. This is partially a recognition that all states are not only multi-ethnic, but also the historic homelands of multiple other groups (545).
• Youth in Central Asia generally have weak identity associations, and there exists a very present gap within an identity marketplace which has not yet been filled. Potential competing identities include ethnic, national, and religious identities. Although governments in Central Asia have strong discouraged trends of pan-Islamism, it will remain a presence b/c other affiliations are weak (546).
• Most youth in Central Asia aspire to join their country's new middle class and enjoy at least some of the consumerist and material aspects of the Western lifestyle. Neither factory work nor farming are seen as viable options, leading many to pursue higher education and business as potential entries into middle-class employment. For the meantime the lack of employment is excused as transitional, and many youth assume that jobs will become available as the transition into capitalism continues. Even when these dreams are not accomplished, they are passed to offspring who continue the cycle (546).
• Most youth hate the nouveau riche. Rather than being respected for their wealth, they are seen as the spawn of corruption [boyvachcha] and with lifestyles to be despised and resented (546).