Spatial sympathies and mobile aspirations: geopolitics of the everyday in encounters with university students in Kyrgyzstan

Imagining and aspiring ‘somewhere abroad’ is perhaps a tendency familiar to most persons on an increasingly interconnected planet. My present research focuses on the phenomenon of these mobile aspirations and their cultivation by youth. In their capacity to influence inclinations towards places one has never been to, and ultimately potential migration, they offer a lens to investigate the everyday as a scene of the geopolitical. At the core of my investigations into this phenomenon lies the hypothesis that youth’s aspirations for mobility do not arise out of the blue. Rather, they derive from a process of cultivating spatial sympathies towards mobile aspirations. Initial spatial sympathies emerge in affective encounters with impressions that have the capacity to evoke inclinations toward distant or unknown places. These inclinations are charged with geopolitical implications, given their impact on perceptions and orientations towards places one has never visited in person. The structuring processes underlying the cultivation of mobile aspirations are described in terms of Pierre Bourdieu’s theorisations, as influences exerted within a field of social forces. Bourdieu explicitly links the cultivation of aspirations to habitus formation, emphasising the general tendency to adapt aspirations to perceived chances and opportunities in constant recourse to the social field. These frequently unconscious or unnoticed processes are considered geopolitically relevant as they contribute to imaginaries of a ‘somewhere abroad’. Grounded in these theoretical considerations, my research with university students in the Kyrgyz Republic traces the social forces structuring spatial sympathies towards mobile aspirations in affective encounters. Students in Bishkek, Osh, and Naryn, as youth socialised in a comparatively young and mobile societal context, can be ascribed increased migration potential and, thus, geopolitical power, as my empirical work, drawing on encounters, argues. Therefore, I employ ethnographic and participatory methods in the framework of an affective ethnography. In my encounters with students, four social forces stand out as major sources of influence on the cultivation of mobile aspirations: close social ties, especially with parents; a commodified education system; impressions floating in globalised cultural consumption; and gendered socialisations. As affective resonances to mediated impressions of a ‘somewhere abroad’ floating in the everyday, spatial sympathies carry a geopolitical momentum that has the powerful potential to ignite a spark engendering bodily attraction towards a certain place. I therefore shed light on the social contexts and processes in the everyday that structure students’ mobile aspirations. These are indicative of potential agency and thus imbued with power, ultimately feeding into a geopolitics of spatial affective affinities, a geopolitics of the everyday.