Kazakhstan Emigration and Immigration

Finding the Town of Origin in Kazakhstan
If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in Kazakhstan, see Kazakhstan Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

Kazakhstan Emigration and Immigration
"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country. Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Immigration into Kazakhstan

 * In the 19th century, the Russian Empire began to expand its influence into Central Asia.
 * The Russian Empire introduced a system of administration and built military garrisons and barracks in its effort to establish a presence in Central Asia in the so-called "Great Game" for dominance in the area against the British Empire, which was extending its influence from the south in India and Southeast Asia.
 * From the 1890s onward, ever-larger numbers of settlers from the Russian Empire began colonizing the territory of present-day Kazakhstan, in particular, the province of Semirechye.
 * The number of settlers rose still further once the Trans-Aral Railway from Orenburg to Tashkent was completed in 1906. A specially created Migration Department in St. Petersburg oversaw and encouraged the migration to expand Russian influence in the area. During the 19th century, about 400,000 Russians immigrated to Kazakhstan, and about one million Slavs, Germans, Jews, and others immigrated to the region during the first third of the 20th century.
 * In 1936, the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (whose territory by then corresponded to that of modern Kazakhstan) was made the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. The republic was one of the destinations for exiled and convicted persons, as well as for mass resettlements, or deportations by the USSR, such as approximately 400,000 Volga Germans, and then later the Greeks and Crimean Tatars.
 * Deportees and prisoners were interned in some of the biggest Soviet labour camps (the Gulag), including ALZhIR camp outside Astana, which was reserved for the wives of men considered "enemies of the people".
 * In the late 1930s, thousands of Koreans in the Soviet Union were deported to Central Asia.
 * Significant Russian immigration was also connected with the Virgin Lands Campaign and Soviet space program during the Khrushchev era. In 1989, ethnic Russians were 37.8% of the population.
 * After the breakup of the Soviet Union, immigration of ethnic Kazakhs from China, Mongolia, and Russia back to Kazakhstan increased.

Emigration From Kazakhstan

 * Before 1991 there were about 1 million Germans in Kazakhstan, mostly descendants of the Volga Germans deported to Kazakhstan during World War II. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, most of them emigrated to Germany.
 * Most members of the smaller Pontian Greek minority have emigrated to Greece.
 * The 1990s were marked by the emigration of many of the country's Russians and Volga Germans, a process that began in the 1970s. This has made indigenous Kazakhs the largest ethnic group.

Records of Kazakhstani     Emigrants in Their Destination Nations

 * United States Emigration and Immigration
 * Canada Emigration and Immigration
 * Germany Emigration and Immigration
 * Greece Emigration and Immigration
 * Russia Emigration and Immigration