‘With a little help from my educated friends’: revisiting the role of social capital for immigrants’ labour market integration in Germany

This article examines the link between immigrants’ social capital and their labour market access (employment) and success (occupational status) in Germany and contributes to previous research in two ways. Firstly, based on insights from theories of social capital and immigrant integration, we overco...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Comparative migration studies 2024-12, Vol.12 (1), p.7-23, Article 7
Main Authors: Rüdel, Julia, Steinmann, Jan-Philip
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access
Autoregressive cross-lagged panel model
Economic integration
Employment
Employment Level
Ethnicity
Immigrants
Labor market
Labour market integration
Methodological problems
Migration
Occupational status
Original Article
Population Economics
Social capital
Social contacts
Social integration
Social networks
Social Sciences
Socioeconomic factors
Sociology
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Summary:This article examines the link between immigrants’ social capital and their labour market access (employment) and success (occupational status) in Germany and contributes to previous research in two ways. Firstly, based on insights from theories of social capital and immigrant integration, we overcome the mere distinction between inter- and intra-ethnic ties. Instead, we approximate resources immigrants can access and mobilize by considering both the ethnic and socioeconomic compositions of their networks. Secondly, by using autoregressive cross-lagged panel models, we properly deal with the methodological challenge of endogeneity inherent to studies concerned with the relationship between social capital and labour market outcomes. Based on longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel the empirical findings indicate the necessity of considering both the ethnic and socioeconomic compositions of immigrants’ networks—as both have independent effects on immigrants’ labour market integration. We conclude that future research on the relationship between immigrants’ social capital and their economic integration may benefit from approximating resources available through social contacts by considering not only the ethnic dimension but also the socioeconomic dimension of contacts.
ISSN:2214-594X
2214-594X
DOI:10.1186/s40878-024-00366-3