How the Link Between Social Capital and Migratory Duration Helps Us Understand Immigrant-Native Inequality* (original) (raw)
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Social Capital and the Wages of Mexican Migrants: New Hypotheses and Tests
Social Forces, 2003
In this article, we develop hypotheses about the ways in which network ties influence wages and the circumstances under which social capital assumes greater or lesser importance in the determination of migrant earnings. We then test these hypotheses using data on male Mexican migrants gathered by the Mexican Migration Project. We find that social capital has both direct and indirect effects on migrant wages. Indirectly, social capital influences how a job is obtained and whether it is in the formal sector. Directly, having friends and relatives with migratory experience improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the job search to yield higher wages. Moreover, the effects of social capital on wages are greater for undocumented than documented migrants, reflecting the more tenuous labor market position of the former. These results confirm and extend social capital theory and underscore the importance of social networks in understanding the determination of migrant earnings. The concept of social capital was introduced into social science by the economist Glenn Loury (1977) but was elaborated theoretically by the sociologists Pierre Bourdieu (1986) and James Coleman (1988). Since its incorporation into the field in the 1980s, it has been applied to a variety of social settings, from neighborhoods (Sampson and Morenoff 1997) to nations (Putnam 2000). Massey and colleagues (1987:170-71) were the first to apply the concept to migration, noting that poor Mexican peasants "may be poor in financial resources, but they are wealthy in social capital, which they can readily convert into jobs and earnings in the United States.
How Immigration Reduced Social Capital in the US: 2005-2011
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013
Putnam (1995)'s seminal work was one of the first to describe the decline of social capital in the US after the 1960s, a period that saw a large increase in the flow of immigrants into the US. Using the Volunteer Supplement of the September Sample of the Current Population Survey (CPS) between 2004 and 2011, we examine the relationship between immigration and social capital in the US, measured by membership of organizations, volunteering and hours volunteered. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to address this question. Once we correct for immigrants' self-selection to different destinations using a supply-push instrumental variable, we find that a one standard deviation increase in the number of immigrants decreases volunteering by 0.08 to 0.12 standard deviations, or that the 8.7 million legal immigrants who entered the US between 2005 and 2011 reduced the probability Americans volunteered between 27.8% and 35.7%. From our robustness checks we argue that the reduction in volunteering by natives is driven by the the fact that new immigrants have a lower social capital, reducing the benefits of volunteering. Our results have important implications for public policy. We show that migrants' social capital has an impact on receiving communities. Therefore immigrants' social capital (such as having relatives living at the receiving community) should be taken into consideration. Future research should focus on what is the optimal weight to give to the presence of family members versus, for instance, educational level of the immigrants.
The world is facing an uncontrollable wave of immigration at an increasingly rapid pace. So much so that even the countries where a large majority of population is immigrant have begun to deport newly arrived immigrants. Some European countries also have been building huge walls or fencing barbed wires in their borders to keep out illegal immigrants. Some European states are also considering stopping the Schengen visa application which has been in practice for a long time. But, the social capital that the OECD defines as the glue may be one of the solutions we seek. In this study, both the possible individual and social benefits of the social capital of refugees forced to leave their countries and of the immigrants with temporary protected status will be assessed.
The British Journal of Sociology, 2017
The study investigates inequalities in access to social capital based on social class origin and immigration background and examines the role of transnational ties in explaining these differences. Social capital is measured with a position generator methodology that separates between national and transnational contacts in a sample of young adults in Sweden with three parental backgrounds: at least one parent born in Iran or Yugoslavia, or two Sweden‐born parents. The results show that having socioeconomically advantaged parents is associated with higher levels of social capital. Children of immigrants are found to have a greater access to social capital compared to individuals with native background, and the study shows that this is related to transnational contacts, parents’ education and social class in their country of origin. Children of immigrants tend to have more contacts abroad, while there is little difference in the amount of contacts living in Sweden across the three grou...
Deporting social capital: Implications for immigrant communities in the United States
Migration Studies, 2015
The United States currently removes approximately 400,000 individual migrants each year, which represents close to an eightfold increase since the mid-1990s. While scholars have studied the consequences of such policies for children and families, this article posits broader effects on communities through the reduction of immigrant social and human capital. Using findings from three studies of immigrant communities and Salvadoran deportees, we show that current deportation practices remove individuals with a wide range of socioeconomic resources and ties to local communities. When they are removed from economic, family, social, and civic networks, the individuals and communities left behind are impoverished in important ways. This is particularly consequential for low-resource immigrant communities, which under the best of circumstances encounter obstacles to economic advancement, social integration, and political engagement. In addition, we consider the potential harm to the institutions in which immigrants participate, such as businesses and churches, which has implications for the economy and society more generally.
Social Capital and International Migration from
2011
We combine data from the Latin American Migration Project and the Mexican Migration Project to estimate models predicting the likelihood of taking of first and later trips to the United States from five nations: Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Peru. The models test specific hypotheses about the effects of social capital on international migration and how these effects vary with respect to contextual factors. Our findings confirm the ubiquity of migrant networks and the universality of social capital effects throughout Latin America. They also reveal how the sizes of these effects are not uniform across settings. Social capital operates more powerfully on first as opposed to later trips and interacts with the cost of migration. In addition, effects are somewhat different when considering individual social capital (measuring strong ties) and community social capital (measuring weak ties). On first trips, the effect of strong ties in promoting migration increases with distance whereas the effect of weak ties decreases with distance. On later trips, the direction of effects for both individual and community social capital is negative for long distances but positive for short distances.
Social Capital and International Migration from Latin America
International journal of population research, 2011
We combine data from the Latin American Migration Project and the Mexican Migration Project to estimate models predicting the likelihood of taking of first and later trips to the United States from five nations: Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Peru. The models test specific hypotheses about the effects of social capital on international migration and how these effects vary with respect to contextual factors. Our findings confirm the ubiquity of migrant networks and the universality of social capital effects throughout Latin America. They also reveal how the sizes of these effects are not uniform across settings. Social capital operates more powerfully on first as opposed to later trips and interacts with the cost of migration. In addition, effects are somewhat different when considering individual social capital (measuring strong ties) and community social capital (measuring weak ties). On first trips, the effect of strong ties in promoting migration incre...