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Recent years have seen the development of new approaches to the study of gender and sexuality in childhood, with attention given to socio-historical, cultural and political contexts. This chapter aims to contribute towards a limited field of research on queer childhood and youth in Central Asia by considering how narratives of queer childhood in Kazakhstan are culturally produced. This chapter draws on the material from in-depth interviews of 11 queer people living in Kazakhstan, focussing on their narratives of childhood. The study exposes the effect of silence about non-heteronormative identities in Kazakhstan on queer children. Narratives of bullying and managing school violence are explored along with narratives of queer childhood within the families of origin. Lastly, the chapter foregrounds instances of agency and resilience, considering how queer children manage to steer themselves away from being an ‘impossible subject’ and contest dominant societal attitudes and discourses.

Since the first days of its independence, Kazakhstan has been overwhelmed by security issues involving its neighbors. It also recognized a number of conventional and unconventional security threats that might undermine stability and development in the region, as well as in the republic. One of the first official documents produced by the Kazakhstan government was the Strategy of Establishment and Development of Kazakhstan as a Sovereign State, initiated by President Nursultan Nazarbayev in May 1992.³ Although specific security threats in Kazakhstan were obvious (as the direction post-Soviet security, military arrangements and the CIS had yet to be determined), three sections of this document dealt specifically with security issues, albeit in relatively vague form.⁴ In the document, President Nazarbayev highlighted the fact that the national security of Kazakhstan had a regional dimension, and that relations with CIS members and other states with interests in Central Asia were very important.⁵ He stressed particularly that his country needed a military doctrine to “prevent and defend against (external) military threat.”⁶ It took several years for this concept of national security to be clarified and conceptualized in a comprehensive document, the Law on National Security of the Republic of Kazakhstan.⁷

This chapter explores the current development of Comparative Education in Central Asia through two parts: a general review of knowledge production with reference to Central Asia in top Comparative Education journals, followed by the development of Comparative Education in Kazakhstan as well as its policy priorities as an example. The example of Kazakhstan shows that scholars, policy-makers, international organizations, and educational practitioners have long been active in comparison in the country. However, the organizational trajectory, particularly the lack of a formal academic program and textbooks in its national languages, is slowing down the pace for Comparative Education to grow into a full-fledged academic field.