Youth Policy and Work with Youth in Kazakhstan: Official Rhetoric and Everyday Practice

The youth state policy is the object of a wide sector of the relationships between the young generation and society. Based on sociological survey and a series of focus groups conducted in 15 cities of republican, regional and local levels in the autumn 2022 – spring 2023, the author analyzes the ideas of young Kazakhstanis about the youth policy of the state and the features of youth work at their place of study or work. The results of the survey show that youth work is associated with educational work in educational institutions, the activities of committees for youth affairs, structures of school and student self-government. In recent years, young Kazakhstanis have noticed no serious turn of the state towards solving their urgent problems and are quite skeptical about the actions of the authorities and public structures. Hence the civic passivity and apoliticality of young people against the backdrop of social problems practically unknown to previous generations, such as unemployment, drugs, social inequality and marginalization, and the lack of effective mechanisms for their solution.