Existing for multiple generations in the western-most aimag (province) of Mongolia, the Kazakh-Mongolian community has succeeded in preserving traditional Kazakh culture and language to a far greater degree than any other Kazakh community in the world. To date, this group has abstained from overtly integrating into Mongolian society, while watching approximately half of their community migrate to the newly sovereign state of Kazakhstan. What is the fate of dispersed peoples who refuse to answer the call of a beckoning kin-state? Can minority ethnicity be sustained by small-scale homelands within nationalising host-states? This article applies a transnational social field approach in analysing the multi-faceted and multi-cited discourses of inclusion and exclusion through which this community is currently negotiating its place in the world.
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Alexander C. Diener (2007) studied this question.