Over the rainbow: Sexual minorities' bonding and bridging social capital and civic engagement

Abstract

This study examines sexual minorities' participation in civic engagement using the theory of social capital. The analysis of the data from a US national survey shows that sexual minorities' bonding capital within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community is positively associated with their civic engagement on LGBT issues, while it is negatively associated with their participation in activities addressing other social issues. Sexual minorities' bridging social capital as generalized trust is positively associated with their civic engagement for non‐LGBT issues, but it has no statistically significant relationship with their civic engagement on LGBT issues. Overall, the findings reveal that sexual minorities' civic engagement beyond LGBT activism is closely related to their generalized trust and reciprocity in society. These findings suggest that an organizational culture of non‐discrimination and equity will help create more diverse and inclusive philanthropy.

Minority bonding to political self-efficacy: a case study on bonding and bridging social capital and political self-efficacy among adolescents in Finland

“…Moreover, most previous studies on minorities' social capital are studies on socioeconomically disadvantaged ethnic minorities (Branscombe et al, 1999;Scholten and Holzhacker, 2009;Heim et al, 2011;Uekusa, 2020), however, some studies are on sexual minorities, who are not necessarily economically disadvantaged (Frost and Meyer, 2012;van der Star and Bränström, 2015;Lee, 2022). Thus, there seems to be a research gap in the previous studies on socioeconomically non-disadvantaged ethnic minorities' bonding and bridging social capital.…”

“…science. For example, it has been used to explain health (Hyyppä and Mäki, 2001;Poortinga, 2012;van der Star and Bränström, 2015;Bamford et al, 2021;McAlpine et al, 2022), wellbeing (Heim et al, 2011;van der Star and Bränström, 2015), success in the labor market (Baalbergen and Jaspers, 2023), a higher level of entrepreneurship (Dana et al, 2018), political trust (Bäck and Kestilä, 2009) and political participation (Verba et al, 1995;Lee, 2022). While the concept of social capital has been defined in multiple ways (see e.g., Bäck, 2011), in political science, social capital is often understood as an interplay of trust and engagement in social networks (see, e.g., Tingaard and Svendsen, 2009).…”

“…This tendency to develop strong bonding social capital is underscored in minority-specific contexts, such as minority sports clubs, where minority members enjoy the chance to interact with each other (Theeboom et al, 2012). A high level of bonding social capital, in turn, is expected to reinforce exclusive identities and homogeneous groups, promote strong ingroup loyalty, and support specific reciprocity and mobilization of within-group solidarity (Lee, 2022). Although young people are studied considerably less than adults, these tendencies also apply to youth, who seem to prefer to rely on bonding social networks, even though they recognize the importance of bridging networks (Jørgensen, 2017).…”

“…Compared with homogeneous minority contexts that enhance strong ties between individuals, heterogeneous contexts and intergroup contacts seem to create weaker ties but contribute more to social skills, intercultural learning, volunteer work, and self-confidence (Theeboom et al, 2012). Thus, minorities can be assumed to have relatively high levels of bonding social capital, such as feelings of belonging to a community, but relatively low levels of bridging social capital, such as generalized trust, even though bonding and bridging capital do not need to be inversely correlated (Lee, 2022). Bridging social capital in general or generalized trust in particular can be further weakened by a hostile public opinion toward the minority (van der Star and Bränström, 2015), experiences of harassment (Heim et al, 2011;Lee, 2022) or discrimination (Bäck and Kestilä, 2009), or a threat from the majority (Lee, 2022).…”

“…Thus, minorities can be assumed to have relatively high levels of bonding social capital, such as feelings of belonging to a community, but relatively low levels of bridging social capital, such as generalized trust, even though bonding and bridging capital do not need to be inversely correlated (Lee, 2022). Bridging social capital in general or generalized trust in particular can be further weakened by a hostile public opinion toward the minority (van der Star and Bränström, 2015), experiences of harassment (Heim et al, 2011;Lee, 2022) or discrimination (Bäck and Kestilä, 2009), or a threat from the majority (Lee, 2022). Such negative experiences, in turn, are common among people belonging to minorities (Heim et al, 2011;Lindell, 2020).…”