Building social capital in a new home country. A closer look into the predictors of bonding and bridging relationships of migrant populations at different education levels

Abstract

Much research has been done on the importance of social networks, but less is known about how social networks are built. This paper explores underlying factors that may contribute to the development of foreign-born populations’ social relationships in Finland. The study builds on Granovetter’s (1973, 1983) dyad of strong and weak ties and a spectrum of social connectedness, which is used as the dependent variable. Multinomial regression analyses are done separately for the tertiary educated and those with secondary education or less. The data comes from the Survey on Well-Being among Foreign Born Population in Finland (n: of 5,343). The study finds notable differences between the education groups. Overall, one out of four foreign-born persons has developed only limited strong and weak ties. This pattern is notably more common among those with lower education levels. Among those with higher education, the most common combination is extensive strong and weak ties. The only predictor that appears strongly and consistently relevant for both groups is a sufficient level of income, which facilitates the development of extensive social networks and protects against limited networks. Moreover, relevant local language skills appear to protect both groups against a limited social network composition.