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?

Ce texte a cherche a mettre en relief les differences systematiques qui existent entre differents modes d’entree et d’integration des groupes immigrants. Cette perspective qui s’articule autour de la question des modes d’integration structuraux, notamment la notion d’enclave ethnique se situe donc en opposition a deux perspectives generalement acceptees : l’une axee sur les modes d’assimilation et l’autre sur la stratification du marche du travail.A ce titre, le texte marque un progres par rapport aux descriptions plus generales du processus d’adaptation. La typologie presentee, ici, reste cependant provisoire. De la meme facon que des recherches sur les situations particulieres de certains groupes ethniques ont permis de modifier, voire remplacer, les hypotheses plus generales existantes, on peut s’attendre a ce que les idees presentees, ici, fassent l’objet de revisions ulterieures. De nouveaux groupes d’immigrants sont en train de changer la composition de l’immigration aux Etats-Unis. Dans ce contexte, le regain d’interet au sujet de l’immigration, ne manquera pas de stimuler de nouvelles etudes empiriques et de nouvelles hypotheses de recherche.

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L’enclave ethnique : réflexions théoriques et études de cas

Janine Dahinden has written a thoughtful and provocative commentary on our 1999 article on immigrant transnationalism. We agree with many of her points and even with some of the critiques levelled ...

Commentary on the study of transnationalism: pitfalls and promise of an emergent research field

The Economics of Immigration@@@Friends or Strangers: The Impact of Immigrants in the U.S. Economy.@@@The Economic Consequences of Immigration.

This paper analyses determinants of the aspirations and expectations among immigrant offspring on the basis of a representative sample of second generation adolescents interviewed at schools in the metropolitan area of Madrid. Seven hypotheses are formulated in relation to status attainment in general and aspirations and expectations in particular. We present breakdowns of educational and occupational aspirations and expectations by gender, parental education and school. The analysis is completed with structural equation models which offer an integrated theoretical perspective on the causal structure of ambition in the Spanish context. We examine the consequences of our conclusions for theory and policies.

https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/3622422.pdf

Progresar en Madrid: aspiraciones y expectativas de la segunda generación en España

Este articulo se propone cumplir tres objetivos: primero, efectuar una revision de diferentes perspectivas teoricas con respecto al desarrollo industrial y la absorcion laboral en los paises del Tercer Mundo; segundo, presentar datos para America Latina que cuestionan las teorias construidas hasta el momento sobre el tema; tercero, proponer una interpretacion alternativa acerca de las tendencias mas recientes de la movilidad y de la absorcion laboral.

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Alejandro Portes

Papers

L’enclave ethnique : réflexions théoriques et études de cas

Commentary on the study of transnationalism: pitfalls and promise of an emergent research field

The Economics of Immigration@@@Friends or Strangers: The Impact of Immigrants in the U.S. Economy.@@@The Economic Consequences of Immigration.

Progresar en Madrid: aspiraciones y expectativas de la segunda generación en España

Desarrollo industrial y absorcion laboral : una reinterpretacion