Undocumented migration and the quantity and quality of social capital

Abstract

Unlike prior researchers the authors argue that social capital contained in migrant networks is not dichotomous but continuous and varies in terms of quality and quantity. Quality is defined by the strength of social ties to people with US experience and by the closeness of their attachment to the US. Quantity is simply the number of connections at a given level of quality. The authors construct four indices of social capital that take into account these notions of quality and quantity and use them to show that social capital has little effect on the costs of undocumented migration between Mexico and the US but that it significantly raises the benefits. They go on to demonstrate that social capital increases the odds of undocumented migration in theoretically expected ways and offer a reformulation of network theory that emphasizes the benefits rather than the costs of migration. (authors)

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