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...

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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 article examines patterns of educational achievement among immigrant second‐generation youths on the basis of a national sample of the American student population. Three hypotheses are tested in relation to the predicted effects of human capital, social capital, and modes of incorporation of immigrant groups. These effects are examined for the second generation in general and four of its principal national components on the basis of multivariate regressions and hierarchical modelling. The latter method allows an examination of the extent to which school contexts affect second‐generation academic achievement and explains resilient inter‐group differences. Results point to the strong influence of parental socioeconomic status and other human capital factors and to the significant, but much weaker, effects of social capital indicators. Controlling for this array of variables does not eliminate the effect of nationality differences, pointing to the resilient influence of modes of incorporation i...

Educating the second generation: Determinants of academic achievement among children of immigrants in the United States

In this essay, I review opposite positions on the relationship between migration and the socio-economic development of sending countries and regions, and the theoretical schools that underlie each of them. In order to adjudicate between these competing perspectives, it is necessary to distinguish between the human capital composition of different migrant flows, their duration, and their structural significance and change potential. This theoretical discussion culminates in a typology that seeks to clarify under which conditions migration can have developmental effects and under which it will be contrary to the advancement of home communities and countries. Policy implications of this analysis, in particular the role of governments in sending and receiving nations, are examined.

Migration and development: reconciling opposite views

This article first gives attention to the ongoing debate about the role of remittances on development. The author presents evidence showing that monetary transfers can induce economic vitality but also expand inequalities in countries of origin. Second, the author examines a phenomenon given little attention until now: the extent to which policies aimed at curtailing unauthorized immigration to the United States are promoting instead the permanent immigration and settlement of vulnerable workers and their families, thus increasing the likelihood that some of their children will respond to hostility and limited opportunity through downward assimilation. When deported, those youngsters transfer deviant styles of life learned abroad to their home communities. International migration has thus become a key element in the study of development.

Migration, Development, and Segmented Assimilation: A Conceptual Review of the Evidence

This is a review of the principal strands of the sociological literature on Spanish-origin groups in the United States. It emphasizes: (a) their labor market characteristics; (b) English acquisition; and (c) political participation and naturalization. We conclude that the label “Hispanic” is itself problematic because of the diversity of the groups included. There are trends toward convergence in political orientations and voting, but there are major divergences in patterns of social and economic adaptation. The rapid increase of new Latin American immigrant communities is likely to add to the diversity characterizing the major Spanish-origin groups already settled in the country.

Making Sense of Diversity: Recent Research on Hispanic Minorities in the United States

This article presents a secondary analysis of citizenship acquisition among legal Mexican immigrants who arrived in the United States during the early 1970s. A large array of individual characteris...

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Alejandro Portes

Papers

Educating the second generation: Determinants of academic achievement among children of immigrants in the United States

Migration and development: reconciling opposite views

Migration, Development, and Segmented Assimilation: A Conceptual Review of the Evidence

Making Sense of Diversity: Recent Research on Hispanic Minorities in the United States

Changing Flags: Naturalization and Its Determinants Among Mexican Immigrants.