Developing a conceptual framework of strategic silence and applying it to various domains of Central Asian international relations, this book uncovers how silence allows states to navigate structural constraints, maintain flexibility, and assert subtle forms of resistance or alignment.Strategic ambiguity and restraint often characterise Central Asia’s response to major geopolitical shifts. This book frames these silences as forms of soft power and subtle resistance that reflect reg...

Central Asian states have experienced a number of historical changes that have challenged their traditional societies and lifestyles. The most significant changes occurred as a result of the revolution in 1917, the incorporation of the region into the Soviet Union, and gaining independence after the collapse of the USSR. Impartial and informed public evaluation of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods has always been a complicated issue, and the ‘official’ descriptions have often contradicted...

This book unpacks the main narratives used in international relations to depict and explain existing inter-state relations in Central Asia, with a focus on the construction of fairer international relations along the Silk Road.The book points to the need to decolonize international relations in the Central Asian region to present a fair representation of the regional states in international affairs. In doing so, the book exposes the concepts and stereotypes that have been imposed o...

This book analyzes initiatives and concepts initiated by China, Japan and South Korea (the Republic of Korea) toward Central Asia to ascertain their impact on regionalism and regional cooperation in Central Asia.Using the case study of Uzbekistan, the book focuses on the formation of the discourse of engagement with the region of Central Asia through the notion of the Silk Road narrative. The author puts forward the prospects for engagement and cooperation in the region by analyzin...

This volume explores emerging patterns of migration from Central Asia to underrepresented destinations such as Australia, Japan, South Korea, Nordic countries, and Türkiye. It critically examines diverse dimensions of mobility—labor migration, student migration, return migration, gendered experiences, diaspora activism, digital media, and host country responses—through empirically grounded and theoretically rich chapters. Drawing on in-depth case studies and fieldwork, this volume contribu...

This edited book unpacks the nature of Central Asian migration to East Asia. This book uses the case of Uzbekistan, the most populous country of Central Asia, and demonstrates the migration channels and adaptation strategies of migrants to the realities of Japan. What are the foreign policy engagements of Japan in Central Asia? How do they relate to the intensifying educational mobility and labour migration from Central Asia (in particular, Uzbekistan) to Japan? By answering these two ques...

This cutting edge collection focuses on the nature of civil society and its role in facilitating governance in Central Asia, considering local implications related to the concept of social capital and civil society in the Uzbek context. It discusses the complexity of the notion of social capital in post-Soviet Uzbekistan, detailing the challenges and pressures facing the Uzbek people.Challenging prevailing views on post-Soviet political transitions, the book demonstrates that succe...

This volume offers perspectives from the general public in post-Soviet Central Asia and reconsiders the meaning and the legacy of Soviet administration in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. This study emphasizes that the way in which people in Central Asia reconcile their Soviet past to a great extent refers to the three-fold process of recollecting their everyday experiences, reflecting on their past from the perspective of their post-Soviet present, and re-imagining. These three elem...

This open access book contributes new theoretical and comparative insights on migrant agency, undocumentedness and informality in non-Western, non-democratic migration regimes. The book is conceived as a critical reflection on the contemporary migration regime scholarship, and, more generally, on comparative migration studies, which primarily focus on migrants’ experiences and immigration policies in the context of liberal democracies in North America and Western Europe. Addressing this ga...

The collapse of the USSR wrought dramatic changes in Eurasia, both in terms of the structure of state power within the region, and the ways in which Western states and international organisations engaged with it. Analyses of conflict in this region remain rooted in supposed ‘global models’, often assuming that patterns of state failure are due to resistance to the liberal model of peacebuilding.This book sets out a challenge to these assumptions and framings. It not only questions ...

Kyrgyzstan is probably the best known of any central Asian country, the one that has elicited the most academic publications, reports by NGOs or advocacy groups, and op-eds in the media. The country opened up massively to Western influence through development aid for civil society and for economic reforms, faced two revolutions in 2005 and 2010, and experienced bloody interethnic conflict in 2010. Kyrgyzstan is therefore commonly studied as a twin case: that of having been, for more than t...

The Florya Chronicles Journal is the scholarly publication of the İstanbul Aydın University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences. The Journal is distributed on a twice a year basis. The Florya Chronicles Journal is a peer-reviewed in the area of economics, international relations, management and political studies and is published in both Turkish and English languages. Language support for Turkish translation is given to those manuscripts received in English and accepted f...