Residential mobility and the spatial dispersion of personal networks: Effects on social support
Highlights
► Residential mobility increases spatial dispersion of personal networks. ► Degree of personal support is not affected by network spatial dispersion. ► Residential mobility exerted two opposite effects on support network structure. ► Distance between personal contacts fosters sparsely knit and centralized networks. ► Distance from the mobile individual and personal contacts fosters transitive networks.
Introduction
The ever-increasing need to be spatially mobile – requisite of highly advanced societies – challenges people to find new ways of developing social ties. Less integrated within the local community than sedentary individuals, mobile individuals have the challenge of maintaining their own social ties in a broader spatial range. In this regard, spatial mobility has an ambivalent nature. On the one hand, the spatial dispersion of friends and family is seen as an obstacle to the building of social ties, as it minimizes opportunities for sharing lasting, intimate relationships outside of the household. On the other hand, moving increases the possibility of making new contacts with select individuals and joining new groups outside the local community.
Recently, this debate has received considerable attention from both mobility and social network analysts (e.g. Carrasco et al., 2008, Kesselring, 2006, Larsen et al., 2006, Lubbers et al., 2010, Mok et al., 2007, Mok et al., 2010). One of the important issues here is how networks change in size and structure as people move. One hypothesis argues that mobile people belong to networks that, without necessarily being different in size, are fragmented, i.e. structured around mutually disconnected clusters of ties and personal contacts stemming from their mobility trajectory. Their interpersonal ties in several places prevent them from bringing their various social circles together. Moreover, the social networks developed by mobile people far from their place of origin are likely built around potentially new roles and foci (i.e. new people, places, social positions, (national) cultures or group memberships) (Feld, 1981). We can then assume that these social circles remain relatively disconnected from the original network, not only because they are removed from it, but also because they were built in a different social context. Dispersed both geographically and socially, the personal networks of mobile people are therefore more individualized, less overlapping and more sparsely knit than the personal networks of non-mobile people (Larsen et al., 2006, Urry, 2003, Wellman, 2002, Wittel, 2001; see also the definition of “liberated community” by Wellman et al., 1988).
The fragmentation hypothesis is interesting because it suggests a series of important interrelational consequences in a mobile world. To begin, individuals in these fragmented networks are less restricted in terms of their behavior than those in networks, which are characterized by the collective nature of normative control: if a network member fails to conform to the network's norms, everybody knows everybody else well, and all of its members may react jointly (Coleman, 1988, Coleman, 1990, Milardo, 1988). Taking advantage of the greater autonomy, individuals in fragmented networks can take advantage of intersecting social circles (Simmel, 1999), potentially leading to the production of forms of geographical multiple membership. With this relatively new form of social integration – specific to modern societies –, individuals can develop an original identity based on a confluence of physically distant, relatively disconnected influences (see e.g. Fischer, 1975, Kadushin, 1966). Secondly, these individuals can also benefit from their position as compulsory intermediary between their network members (Burt, 1992), meaning they can broker or mediate between people who are not directly linked, using “tertius gaudens” strategies (i.e. exploit those disconnected parties to their benefit). Thirdly, social ties within fragmented networks are more likely to bridge new clusters and, as such, non-redundant, non-local resources (Granovetter, 1973). A fourth consequence, however, is that these individuals are less likely to benefit from collective mutual support. Unlike densely knit networks, where trust, obligations and mutual aid are reinforced by collective constraints and direct links, members of fragmented networks are less apt to coordinate their efforts when it comes to helping other network members. In such cases, the individual cannot benefit from collective solidarity practices and must deal with each tie separately (Wellman and Frank, 2000). Lastly, fragmented networks also hamper communications by reducing the number of information channels and multiplying the number of intermediaries between any two network members (Baker, 1984).
Although social network analysts have long investigated the impact of geographical distance on interpersonal ties (for pioneering work, see i.e. Fischer, 1982, Wellman and Leighton, 1979, Wellman, 1990, Wellman and Wortley, 1990), large-scale surveys linking the geography and structure of social networks and mobility are still limited. Empirical studies have, thus far, largely focused on specific professional categories characterized by a strong propensity for movement (migrants, highly qualified professions, long-distance commuters). As such, a systematic overview of representative data is missing. This article aims to fill this gap by examining the fragmentation hypothesis using survey data on personal networks in Switzerland. We began by assessing the influence of individuals’ social characteristics, network composition and residential mobility on the spatial dispersion of networks. We then investigated the effects of this dispersion and of living far from one's birthplace on the number and structure of support ties.
Section snippets
Spatial mobility and the transformation of interpersonal space
Sociological studies have shown that social ties in highly advanced societies are built and maintained based not only on proximity, but also distance, with increasingly facilitated access to transportation and communication systems (Castells, 2000, Frei and Axhausen, 2007, Hampton and Wellman, 2002, Larsen et al., 2006, Urry, 2007a, Wellman, 1996, Wellman, 1999). Consequently, the capacity to build and sustain social ties with individuals that are not necessarily in the immediate vicinity
Data and measures
The 2005 MOSAiCH1 survey included the Swiss portion of the International Social Survey Program's (ISSP) annual survey. 1,078 persons living in Switzerland aged 18 years old and older were randomly selected from the Swiss telephone directory (response rate = 50.1%) and
The impact of residential mobility on network spatial dispersion
A first linear regression was run to estimate how people's social characteristics and network composition related to earlier residential mobility (Table 4). Individuals who lived far from their area of residence at age 14 were more likely women and people aged 51–65, compared to those aged 35–50, who constituted the reference category. Conversely, people living in periurban areas and small urban centers, as well as those living in other living arrangements (many of them with parents), lived
Discussion
This study examined the impact of the spatial dispersion of networks and earlier residential mobility on the provision of emotional support within personal networks. The general hypothesis was that residential mobility fosters personal networks that are geographically spread out and that, in turn, favor a fragmented structure, i.e. sparsely connected, intransitive support networks in which mobile people play the role of compulsory intermediary between their personal contacts. Based on our data,
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to express his thanks to Eric D. Widmer, Vincent Kaufmann and Eva Nada, as well as anonymous reviewers, for their helpful comments to earlier versions of this article, although they are not necessarily in agreement with the author's point of view. Many thanks also to Dominique Joye, Ivan De Carlo and Gilbert Ritschard for their help in data formatting and statistical analyses, and to Jessica Strelec for her language assistance. This work was supported by the Swiss National
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