Student parcel" as an actant in the network of migrant students from Kazakhstan: on the question of constructing a community

The article is dedicated to the analysis of a «student parcel» as a material object contributing to the formation of a human community that is the Kazakhstan migrant student community. The main research question put forward is as follows: drawing on the actor-network theory, is the «student parcel» a link in the actor-network chain which contributes to the building of a migrant student community and are parcel items actants which contribute to the cultural marking of the space? The «student parcel», if to use Bruno Latour»s language, has got an array of non-human actants that ultimately find themselves in student dormitories. In Tomsk, where the study has been carried out, students from Kazakhstan constitute the largest group of foreign students. For this particular reason, our study is focused on networks which are constructed by the «student parcel» from Kazakhstan and actants belonging to the given group. The additional task set is to reveal non-human actants through which the space may get ethnically marked (the urban space or the dormitory space). At the initial stage of research, the main goal was to describe in detail the entire network being formed by the parcel (parcel items, recipients, senders, emotions, relationships between network members), with the analysis of actants to be carried out subsequently. There were five basic stages defined during which the parcel path from an addresser to an addressee was considered in detail and non-human actants comprising the parcel classified. All the non-human actants of the «student parcel» can be presented in accordance with some criteria. The author put forward a classification system within which items have been divided into six classes with regard to their intended purpose. The prospective research task is to define who and what gets together around the parcel. In other words, what networks are formed around that actant. Based on the analysis of the «student parcel» movement in the framework of the actor-network theory, where «spaces of networks» are independent, there can be some segments of network(s) as well as internal animate and inanimate actants of these networks and their actors defined. The author believes that the parcel forms a great deal of various segments of large networks: «family network», «customs house network», «parents network», etc. However, the «student parcel» per se and the constructs built on it do no bear any ethnic markers, and networks formed around it do not have ethnic characteristics.

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