Dungan people
Few of the older Uyghur migrants retain personal cross-border links with relatives or friends in Xinjiang. Those who do generally try to avoid drawing Kazakhstani government attention to these links; for example, when their relatives from Xinjiang come to visit, they obtain visas on the pretext of being cross-border traders. During perestroika and glasnost in the 1980s, the Kazakh SSR government encouraged Uyghurs to discuss and promote Xinjiang independence in a successful strategy to eradicate a popular movement for Uyghur autonomy within the Soviet Union. By 1990, the Uyghurs' shifting ethnic and political (anti-China) consciousness led them to build separate mosques and schools from the Dungan people (Hui people in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan), with whom they had lived together in Kazakhstan since the 1950s.