Generational Orders in Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan - Young Adults Between Independence and Interdependence

Our paper is based on field research, qualitative interviews and group discussions with young people of different social origin in Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan concerning their biographical plans for professional and private life. In both countries the ethnographic and interview material points to strong obligations of young people towards their families of origin, e.g. obligations to submit to parents’ will, to support parents financially, to support them with care work or just with affection and attention.  Such obligations are legitimated by what is meant to be tradition, by religion and as well by a generational and gendered order as they may be especially strong towards daughters. These strong expectations young adults are confronted with however conflict with educational and occupational aspirations which young adults hold for themselves or which are held by their parents for them. Educational migration is of major importance in this context. Various solutions are worked out in such conflictive constellations, some being more, some being less realistic planning, and most of them maintaining the validity of an age hierarchical order.  By comparing the two countries and the various groups in these countries, the paper will present a theoretical approach identifying constellations that are supportive or obstructive in regard to favorable solutions.