Similarity breeds connection. This principle—the homophily principle—structures network ties of every type, including marriage, friendship, work, advice, support, information transfer, exchange, comembership, and other types of relationship. The result is that people's personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics. Homophily limits people's social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience. Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments, with age, religion, education, occupation, and gender following in roughly that order. Geographic propinquity, families, organizations, and isomorphic positions in social systems all create contexts in which homophilous relations form. Ties between nonsimilar individuals also dissolve at a higher rate, which sets the stage for the formation of niches (localize...

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Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks

This paper reviews the origins and definitions of social capital in the writings of Bourdieu, Loury, and Coleman, among other authors. It distinguishes four sources of social capital and examines their dynamics. Applications of the concept in the sociological literature emphasize its role in social control, in family support, and in benefits mediated by extrafamilial networks. I provide examples of each of these positive functions. Negative consequences of the same processes also deserve attention for a balanced picture of the forces at play. I review four such consequences and illustrate them with relevant examples. Recent writings on social capital have extended the concept from an individual asset to a feature of communities and even nations. The final sections describe this conceptual stretch and examine its limitations. I argue that, as shorthand for the positive consequences of sociability, social capital has a definite place in sociological theory. However, excessive extensions of the concept may j...

/pdf/social-capital-its-origins-and-applications-in-modern-1u65djoshv.pdf

Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology

This chapter aims to develop one of perhaps multiple specifications of embeddedness, a concept that has been used to refer broadly to the contingent nature of economic action with respect to cognition, social structure, institutions, and culture. Research on embeddedness is an exciting area in sociology and economics because it advances understanding of how social structure affects economic life. The chapter addresses propositions about the operation and outcomes of interfirm networks that are guided implicitly by ceteris paribus assumptions. While economies of time due to embeddedness have obvious benefits for the individual firm, they also have important implications for allocative efficiency and the determination of prices. Under the conditions, social processes that increase integration combine with resource dependency problems to increase the vulnerability of networked organizations. The level of investment in an economy promotes positive changes in productivity, standards of living, mobility, and wealth generation.

Social Structure and Competition in Interfirm Networks: The Paradox of Embeddedness

A growing number of sociologists, political scientists, economists, and organizational theorists have invoked the concept of social capital in the search for answers to a broadening range of questions being confronted in their own fields. Seeking to clarify the concept and help assess its utility for organizational theory, we synthesize the theoretical research undertaken in these various disciplines and develop a common conceptual framework that identifies the sources, benefits, risks, and contingencies of social capital.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/4134367.pdf

Social Capital: Prospects for a New Concept

The Behavioral Model of Health Services Use was initially developed over 25 years ago. In the interim it has been subject to considerable application, reprobation, and alteration. I review its development and assess its continued relevance.

Revisiting the behavioral model and access to medical care: does it matter?

This study examined patterns of language adaptation by over 5,000 second-generation students in south Florida and southern California. It found that among most immigrant nationalities, knowledge of and preference for English is nearly universal, that only a minority remain fluent in their parents' languages, and there are wide variations among immigrant groups in the extent of their retention of these languages. The authors used multivariate and multilevel analyses to identify the principal factors accounting for variation in foreign language maintenance and bilingualism. They found that a number of variables emerged as significant predictors, but these variables do not account for differences among immigrant nationalities, such as between children of Asian and Hispanic backgrounds, that become even more sharply delineated. The reasons for this divergence are explored and their policy implications are discussed.

E Pluribus Unum: Bilingualism and Loss of Language in the Second Generation.

Employment in the informal sector generally connotes various forms of precarious or subterranean employment concentrated in urban areas primarily in developing countries. The informal economic developed in response to post-World War II urban labor surpluses generated by high population growth and accelerated rural-urban migration associated with the adoption of import substitution industrialization. National governments and international development agencies have recently given a great deal of attention to this notion of informality. Many programs have especially been implemented in Latin America with the goal of improving conditions in the sector. This paper reviews successive conceptualizations of the informal sector in Latin America; describes the measurement strategies used to study the sector; and examines ways in which the current state of knowledge about the informal sector affects development policies. Competing definitions of the phenomenon make it difficult to identify sector boundaries internal dynamics and needs. These different views therefore lead to the formulation of differing policy recommendations. On the one hand it is desirable to completely absorb the labor force into the formal sector but this will not happen unless rigid labor rules are relaxed. It is equally desirable to transform subsistence activities into dynamic autonomous small firms but this also will not result by simply removing state controls without the aid of sustained support programs. Policy alternatives from the structuralists however combine greater flexibility in existing labor codes with active programs in support of small entrepreneurial development. When working with developing enterprises it is stressed that entrepreneurial incubators should be extremely flexible decentralized and adapted to the needs and skills of local communities. Moreover attention should be paid to the social ties and community bonds present among informal artisans and merchants.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2938384.pdf

Competing perspectives on the Latin American informal sector.

Recent field work on the origins of the Cuban ethnic economy in South Florida is reviewed in the context of competing theories of minority entrepreneurship. Sociological theories that emphasize contextual characteristics internal to the group itself appear to fit best the empirical evidence. They do not clarify, however, the dynamic aspects of the process—that is, the actual steps through which individual and family business goals become implemented. A typology of minority enterprise on the basis of background characteristics of its founders is developed. Implications of the Miami experience for theory and policies aimed at promoting self-employment among minorities are discussed.

The Social Origins of the Cuban Enclave Economy of Miami

This Special Issue presents original results from the third wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study [CILS], a decade-old panel that followed a large sample of second-generation youths from early adolescence to early adulthood. The issue contains results of the third survey, conducted in 2001–2003 as members of the panel had reached an average age of 24. This introduction provides evidence of the importance of the topic, describes the methodology of the study, and summarizes the contents of the issue. The following articles examine different aspects of the second-generation adaptation process in early adulthood and tests alternative hypotheses on the forms of the process and its determinants.

Introduction: The Second Generation and the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study

We examine the question of the economic returns to immigrants engaged in self-employment....Based on samples of four entrepreneurial immigrants plus control samples of Blacks and Whites from the 1980 [U.S.] Public Use Microdata Sample we find large differences in the net effect of self-employment depending on the use of a linear (absolute dollar values) or loglinear (relative returns) form. We examine various explanations for the discrepancy and identify the role of outliers as significant. The loglinear form fits the data better but at the cost of obliterating substantively important information namely the preponderance of the self-employed among positive outliers. Effects of excluding the latter from the linear form and the theoretical and policy implications of alternative specifications of the earnings equation are examined. (EXCERPT)

Alejandro Portes

Papers

E Pluribus Unum: Bilingualism and Loss of Language in the Second Generation.

Competing perspectives on the Latin American informal sector.

The Social Origins of the Cuban Enclave Economy of Miami

Introduction: The Second Generation and the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study

Self-Employment and the Earnings of Immigrants