Borderlands of the post-Soviet South: crossing spaces with Aisuluu, a student from Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

In this article we get to know a young girl from Kyrgyzstan and a fragment of her story. Aisuluu leaves to study in a neighbouring country, where our student paths intertwine in a big city and on a small campus. My task as a researcher is to leave visible the agency of the person herself as she walks her own paths through life and crosses boundaries within and outside her native social worlds – sometimes relying on the experiences of close people and sometimes departing from them to change the trajectory. Aisuluu has not only had the opportunity to move between the liminalities of bordering cities, close cultures