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Zanaozen is a single industry oil town in western Kazakhstan. Its population has almost doubled over the past 10 years and made 102 thousand people as of January 2013. A very large portion of the people who contributed to this massive population growth were repatriates – ethnic Kazakhs – mostly from Uzbekistan, China, Mongolia, Turkmenistan and Russia.
The Kazakhstan government largely supported the campaign of bringing the repatriates back to Kazakhstan, but the migration flows have turned out difficult to control. Many of the newcomers have no education or professional skills, many feel unwelcome among Kazakhstan citizens. This pushes them to leave in estranged communities and creates social tensions.
Kazakhstan government has already started taking steps to resolve the education problem, but housing and infrastructure problems remain very acute as the population in Zhanaozen has been growing faster than the town’s utility networks.
