Conference Agenda

This article analyses the social networks of rural–urban migrant entrepreneurs in Uganda. While social contacts are often an important asset to access resources for migrants, they are often expected to financially support the members of their social networks. These claims for support are here labelled ‘negative social capital’, following Portes' seminal work. This paper focuses on the kinds of networks that are more likely to produce negative social capital, operationalized here as requests for financial resources, and links this to the discourse on bridging and bonding social capital. By means of a regression analysis, this article provides evidence of dense networks with a higher share of migrants (bonding social capital) being associated with negative social capital. In addition, both a higher share of contacts met before migration, which is related to bonding social capital, and a higher share of contacts living in the city, which is related to bridging social capital, are negatively associated with requests for resources. These findings suggest that migrants can instrumentally keep some contacts from before migration and acquire new key contacts in the urban area.

Migration in Central America is a complex process, driven by social networks, demographic factors, and the physical environment. We investigate how these drivers cumulatively drive both international and internal migration patterns from Western Honduras, using detailed longitudinal data from 175 isolated Honduran communities (N = 24,646). We focus on the effects of kinship and friendship networks on migration, alongside standard demographic predictors and also several climate predictors. Analysis is conducted with a series of logistic regression models, regressing the set of demographic, network, and climate predictors on individual-level migration decisions. When considering international migration, Western Honduras matches the observed patterns of selectivity for migration. Those with any formal education, men, and younger people tend to be migratory. Likewise, damaging climate conditions (maximum temps > 30C) depress migration rates, which we hypothesize is due to the negative effect these temperatures have on agriculture. Finally, network structure prior to observed migration does not significantly drive international migration. On the other hand, network structure does strongly predict patterns of internal mobility. Internal migration is not nearly as selective as international migration, and we find that those embedded in highly cohesive friendship networks are less likely to engage in mobility. These results frame internal migration from Western Honduras as a social process, rather than an economic one.

One of the salient themes, both in the social network analysis literature and its applications to migration research, is a shift to a more dynamic conceptualisation of (migrant) social networks. To elaborate on the dynamic nature of migrant networks, I reconstructed and examined the support networks of 134 Filipino nurses, domestic workers, and care workers in New York and London in three migration phases (pre-migration, initial adjustment, and current situation) through the factors that significantly shaped their stability or evolution at the micro- and macro- levels. At the micro-level, shifts in the respondents’ networks were examined vis-à-vis biographical events and transitions. At the macro-level, immigration policies and migration pathways were also discussed as shaping network dynamics. It was further observed that transnational ties re-emerged as relevant connections after the initial adjustment phase while ties in intermediary countries and connections that are geographically mobile should be included in an expanded concept of transnational ties beyond the countries of origin and destination.

This paper will examine the complex relationship between migrants’ social networks and their childcare arrangements. Social networks play a crucial role in migrant parents’ childcare behavior: On the one hand, social networks provide informal childcare (childcare provided by grandparents, other family members, or neighbors/friends) to migrant parents; on the one hand, social networks are a crucial source of important information about formal childcare (provided by private or government-led organisations). Particularly the latter has been framed as crucial for migrant families as it increases female migrants’ chances in the labor market and promotes language skills and cognitive abilities, and thus, integration chances for migrant children. Yet, families with a migration background use formal childcare significantly less than native families, creating long-term ethnic inequalities.

The goal of this paper is two-fold: First, it provides a long-needed overview of the complex relationship between migrants’ social networks and their childcare behavior. While most studies focus only on one aspect (such as the provision of informal childcare), a closer look at the literature reveals that social networks can be both, hindering and facilitating formal and informal childcare. Second, we analyze unique social network data (Childcare; Dutch Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences ([LISS]) and examine which factors determine if migrant parents rely on their social network for formal or informal childcare and how these patterns differ for non-migrant patterns. Novel to this data is its incorporation of information transmission within migrants’ social networks specifically targeted at childcare.

Previous research shows that migrant parents possess less information about the organization of formal childcare as well as childcare benefits provided by the government, thus reducing their chances of accessing formal childcare. We examine to what extent this information gap is due to ethnic differences in resources within social networks. We argue that social networks that are strong in providing informal childcare are less beneficial in providing relevant information about formal childcare possibilities and vice versa. Moreover, given the ethnic differences in social network composition between migrant and non-migrant parents, these social network effects might explain the lower usage of formal childcare among migrant populations. With reference to the social protection literature, we explore the theoretical meaning of these patterns, in particular for the labor market participation chances of migrant women.

Evidence based on the case of a migrant-sending village in the Philippines shows that social networks at the origin play crucial role in the perpetuation of temporary labor migration to various destinations. They provide not only financial resources but also information that are deemed more trustworthy and reliable. Furthermore, it shows that a socially cohesive network structure allows for social influencing to transpire thereby facilitating migration behavior to cascade across households in the community. Aided by social network analysis and migration history data, this study provides evidence of how earlier cohorts of migrants provided much needed financial and informational support to recent cohorts. It also points out that the initial diffused distribution of pioneer migrant-sending households across the community enabled migration activities to not be concentrated on a few families. Pioneers also held central positions within the community network. Such prior distribution and connectedness allowed pioneers to influence their personal networks into labor migration through provision of various types of support. This study shows that examining more deeply the network structure of migrant-sending origin communities can provide interesting nuances about network effects on migration.

This presentation introduces a new research project (2025-2029) that aims to document, analyse and understand the dynamics of transnational families in a context of ‘crisis migration’, in the case of Ukrainian forced migrants. By combining theoretical perspectives from family sociology and transnational family studies, with a social networks approach, in this project the transnational family is understood as a Transnational Family Configuration (TNFC), i.e. a diverse and dispersed personal family network that unfolds across kinship and national boundaries. TNFC is a relational and dynamic entity embedded in evolving social, spatial and temporal contexts in which different resources can be mobilised and exchanged. The combination of two methodological frameworks - the "family network method" (Widmer 2010) and "telling network stories" (Ryan 2021) - is used as the basis for a qualitative and longitudinal research design that includes (repeated) in-depth semi-structured interviews combined with pencil-based ego-maps. Two case studies allow for a comparative investigation of TNFC among Ukrainian forced migrants in two contrasting destination contexts, namely Romania and Switzerland. Through these theoretical and methodological approaches, this study will provide an understanding of: 1) the transformation of the composition and geographical dispersion of forced migrants' family networks under conditions of forced displacement; 2) the impact of the forced dispersal of family members on family relationships, support exchanges and care arrangements; and 3) the mobilisation of relational resources by forced migrants to cope with family needs and obligations and to support their family members in nearby places and across borders.