Title: Kazakh Migrations

General Information about Item:

• Verbal Lore,  Joke
• Language: Kazakh
• Country of Origin: Kazakhstan
• Informant: Assel Uvaliyeva
• Date Collected: 11-1-18

Informant Data:

• Assel Uvaliyeva was born on February 25, 1995.  She is from Almaty, Kazakhstan, of Tatar and Kazakh origin. She currently works as a teachers assistant and studies at Dartmouth College as a graduate student. She speaks Russian, Kazakh, and English.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: Kazakhs have a history of making fun of immigration especially with young people. While it is not necessarily joked about by all young people, the structure of the joke plays on the exaggeration of immigration and a change in expectations for the punchline.
• Social Context: Assel found this meme on an Instagram account that regularly posts Kazakhstan memes. Memes are visual representations of viral lore, that is understood by a large of group of people associated with the meme’s content, in this case the content is best understood by people familiar with Kazakhstan’s job market. Although Assel is Kazakh, the meme is especially humorous for her because she has immigrated out of her university to attend school in the US. Also, the Instagram account allows her to keep up to date with jokes from her culture.

Item:

• This joke is formatted as a meme from a popular Instagram page focusing on Kazakh memes. The meme pokes fun at professional Kazakhs leaving the country and juxtaposes their migrations as being natural such as animal migrations in search for food.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript:

• First Panel: “Birds go South in search for food.”
• Second Panel: “Roe deer leave to warmer countries to escape winter.”
• Third Panel: “Kazakhs go abroad where salaries correspond to their skills.”

Informant’s Comments:

• “This joke makes fun of young people leaving Kazakhstan. It is extremely relevant and I know many people that have left to find work elsewhere.”

Collector’s Comments:

• This joke is similar to jokes that I have seen from other countries near the United States. I have seen similar memes that involve politics especially when a new president is elected; people often make jokes about immigration.

Collector’s Name: Philip Berton

Tags/Keywords:

• Verbal Lore
• Joke
• Migration
• Animals
• Memes
• Kazakhstan