The Role of Social Networks in Immigrant Women’s Political Incorporation

This article examines how immigrant women’s social networks affect their propensity to vote and to participate in unconventional political activities, as well as their knowledge of politics and government services and programs. Our primary source of data is a telephone survey of women living in Canada’s two largest metropolitan areas. Our findings show that contrary to the social capital literature, bonding ties do not exert strong negative effects on political incorporation, while bridging ties are not as helpful as hypothesized. What is important for immigrant women are the resources that are embedded in their social networks.     

The Role of Social Networks in the Recruitment of Youth in an Islamist Organization in Pakistan

Drawing on data from 40 qualitative interviews, this article examines how young people are connected with one influential Islamist student organization in Pakistan. It provides deeper insight into the micro-level mechanisms and processes by which new members are approached and drawn closer to the particular organization. Findings reveal that young people who joined this organization did not necessarily do so because of their ideological affinity, political or social grievances or because of macro-level events occurring in the national or global arena, such as the U.S.-led war on terror. Rather, they predominantly ended up in the organization because of their friends and acquaintances who were activists in the organization.     

Discerning Work as a Calling: The Role of Job Crafting

On the basis of career construction theory (CCT), the authors aimed to describe mechanisms by which work may be perceived as a calling. They did so by measuring the mediation and moderation effects of job crafting and power distance orientation (PDO) within the relationship between cognitive flexibility and calling. PDO levels become essential for high‐power‐distance societies such as Indonesia because PDO can decrease proactive behaviors, such as job crafting. Three hundred four employees in Indonesia responded to measures of calling, PDO, job crafting, and cognitive flexibility. Analyses indicated that the relationship between cognitive flexibility and calling is mediated by cognitive crafting and moderated by PDO. Results support CCT as useful for understanding the mechanisms of calling. For a high‐power‐distance country, the process of discerning a calling is influenced by submissive attitudes toward a superior. Thus, in assisting job‐crafting processes, counselors should focus on the relationship between employees and their superiors.     

The Role of a Clinical Social Worker in a Changing Society

This paper reviews the anomaly that seems currently to exist within the profession of social work — on the one hand a denigration of the value and utility of individualized services, and on the other, the increased anonymity of life in today's technological society. It is suggested that the need for individualized services will continue to exist regardless of institutional change and that clinical social work will remain an essential and specialized part of the social work profession. It is postulated that if the clinicians look elsewhere for education and recognition this will be a loss for social work.     

The Role of Social Networks in the Immigration Decision-making Process: The Case of North American Immigration to Israel

This study focuses on the role of social networks in the decision-making process in migration which occurs between developed countries, specifically in immigration from North America to Israel. The central declared motives for immigration were religious; nevertheless, “materialistic” issues were also mentioned. The decision-making process was long, usually taking from 2 to 10 years. Information was gathered via personal contacts from social networks, during visits to Israel, and from Jewish organisations. The Internet also played a major role in this process. Networks that were set up by Israeli and Jewish organisations were found to be especially effective in organising immigration because they connected non-numerous dispersed individuals, who were thinking about Aliyah, and needed various kinds of support.     

Getting Unemployed Job Seekers Back to Work: The Development of a Process Model of Employment Counseling Behavior

The aim of this study was to propose a tentative model of employment counseling based on 31 critical incident interviews with supervisors, employment counselors, and unemployed job seekers. The incidents (N= 599) mentioned in the interviews were inductively used to develop a category framework describing behaviors of employment counselors. On the basis of the interviews, categories, and incidents within these categories, the authors proposed a 4‐phase preliminary model of the employment counseling process. Findings suggest that employment counseling is a complex and dynamic process involving several distinct and consecutive steps focused on clients, governmental funding agencies, colleagues, and employers.     

The Role of Job Insecurity in Explanations of Racial Health Inequalities

The literature documenting substantial health differences for racial minorities in the United States is well developed and has considered a multitude of explanations for such disparities. However, the literature seldom addresses the health effects for racial minorities produced in the workplace. This study bridges these two literatures in order to understand the mediating role of job insecurity in explanations of racial health disparities. Our central argument is that racial differences in job insecurity resulting from the marginalized labor market positions of racial minorities are partially responsible for racial disparities in health. This study utilizes adjacent category and partial adjacent category logit models of general health using data from the 2000 to 2010 General Social Survey in order to test this claim. Overall, the results from this study indicate that there are substantial racial differences in job insecurity, and both race and job insecurity are important predictors of general self‐rated health. Additionally, racial differences in job insecurity help explain a portion of the racial disparities in health. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for the study of health disparities in the United States.     

高校毕业生社会支持、求职意向与求职行为的关系影响研究

高校毕业生社会支持、求职意向与求职行为的关系对于大学生就业辅导和职业生涯规划具有重要的理论和现实意义。主观支持对求职行为有正向影响,来自于亲人、朋友等社会资本的扶持及其心理上的情感支持尤其影响求职行为;另一方面,求职意向在社会支持和求职行为之间起中介作用,个体可以积极寻求主观支持,调整求职意向的强弱,进而实施求职行为促进成功就业。     

The Emergence and Stability of Groups in Social Networks

An important puzzle in social network research is to explain how macro-level structures emerge from micro-level network processes. Explaining the emergence and stability of structural groups in social networks is particularly difficult for two reasons. First, because groups are characterized both by high connectedness within (group cohesion) and lack of connectedness between them (group boundaries). Second, because a large number of theoretical micro-level network processes contribute to their emergence. We argue that traditional social network theories that are concerned with the evolution of positive relations (forces of attraction) are not sufficient to explain the emergence of groups because they lack mechanisms explaining the emergence of group boundaries. Models that additionally account for the evolution of negative ties (forces of repulsion) may be better suited to explain the emergence and stability of groups. We build a theoretical model and illustrate its usefulness by fitting stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOMs) to empirical data of co-evolving networks of friendship and dislike among 479 secondary-school students. The SAOMs include a number of newly developed effects expressing the co-evolution between positive and negative ties. We then simulate networks from the estimated models to explore the micro-macro link. We find that a model that considers forces of attraction and repulsion simultaneously is better at explaining groups in social networks. In the long run, however, the empirically informed simulations generate networks that are too stylized to be realistic, raising further questions about model degeneracy and time heterogeneity of group processes.     

Cultural Resources and Mobilization of Social Capital: The Case of Finding a Job

By combining the latest knowledge from cultural sociology and social network theories, a hypothesis is posed regarding the association between cultural consumption and social capital mobilization. On the classic example of looking for work, an assumption was made that persons who prefer or engage in a larger number of cultural forms (the so-called omnivores) have greater chances to find work through social contacts than through any other methods or may count on social support when looking for job, and this relationship is stronger for non-family than for family ties. These arguments are tested with the use of survey data collected in Poland in 2017 on a locally representative sample of adult residents aged 18–75. The results support the hypotheses and additionally show that people with different cultural profiles differ in their capacity to access and mobilize social resources. While participation in both highbrow and popular culture is efficacious, not all forms of the popular one are positively related to social resources. The article is closed with some concluding remarks, limitations of the study, and guidelines for future research.     

Social Networks and Social Settings: Developing a Coevolutionary View

One way to think about social context is as a sample of alters. To understand individual action, therefore, it matters greatly where these alters may be coming from, and how they are connected. According to one vision, connections among alters induce local dependencies—emergent rules of social interaction that generate endogenously the observed network structure of social settings. Social selection is the decision of interest in this perspective. According to a second vision, social settings are collections of social foci—physical or symbolic locales where actors meet. Because alters are more likely to be drawn from focused sets, shared social foci are frequently considered as the main generators of network ties, and hence of setting structure. Affiliation to social foci is the decision of central interest in this second view. In this paper we show how stochastic actor–oriented models (SAOMs) originally derived for studying the dynamics of multiple networks may be adopted to represent and examine these interconnected systems of decisions (selection and affiliation) within a unified analytical framework. We illustrate the empirical value of the model in the context of a longitudinal sample of adolescent participating in the Glasgow Teenage Friends and Lifestyle Study. Social selection decisions are examined in the context of networks of friendship relations. The analysis treats musical genres as the main social foci of interest.     

Getting the Goods on Social Capital1

Abstract This article presents an overview of the origins, development, rapid diffusion, and current usage of the concept of social capital in both the academic (research-oriented) and more applied (social policy) literature. Following a short quantitative survey of the appearance of the term in both theses and journals, various meanings of social capital are examined in the light of classical and contemporary sociological theory. Three main research approaches, which are based on the operationalization of social capital or its application as a heuristic device, are critically examined. These approaches are associated with the work ofJames Coleman, Pierre Bourdieu, and Robert Putnam, but there are also some references to the work of economists. The authors contend that, while social capital has value and appeal as a new term, basic theory needs greater development. In particular, attention should be paid to acknowledging the specific perspective on social capital that underlies its usage, the scale or level of analysis employed, and the value of a qualitative use of social capital.     

Role Acquisition as a Social Process

A model of the role acquisition process is proposed based on data from 310 first-person written narratives of a single role entrance. Content analysis of data set II ( N = 110) of narratives, which included forty-seven different roles, provides support for the model. The model conceptualizes role acquisition as involving a sequence of four stages, characterized as (1) ambivalence, (2) absorption, (3) commitment, and (4) confidence, in which each stage involves a qualitatively different interaction between the person and the role: a different affective orientation on the part of the person toward the role, and a qualitatively different relationship between the person and role partners. Common features and heterogeneous effects of role type, social context, cognitive processes, and other factors at each stage are discussed.     

Turnover as a Strategy to Escape Job Insecurity: The Role of Family Determinants in Dual-Earner Couples

Job insecurity is a stressful condition with well-known negative consequences. This study investigated the extent to which individuals voluntarily changed jobs as a strategy to cope with job insecurity, taking into account the family context. We tested whether job insecurity promoted voluntary turnover. Family factors were expected to either hamper or stimulate turnover, and to affect the relationship between job insecurity and turnover. Using longitudinal data from the Swiss Household Panel (2004–2013), we showed that men facing job insecurity were more likely to experience voluntary turnover. For women this was only true when they did not have preschool-aged children at home and experienced low levels of economic hardship. Moreover, family factors influenced voluntary turnover differently for men and women: Economic hardship increased the odds of voluntary turnover for men, whereas a partner’s job insecurity lowered the odds for women.     

The Role of Organizational Size and Industry in Job Quality and Work-Family Relationships

In this study we update analyses of the 1977 QES (Zipp, 1991) using data from the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce. We use hierarchical linear modeling procedures to partition the variance in a wide variety of indicators of workers' experiences. Most variation was associated with the individual level of analysis, but significant and nontrivial variation also was associated with the organizational and industrial levels. Although workers in smaller organizations reported lower earnings, fewer benefits, and less education than their counterparts in larger organizations, they also reported experiencing less discrimination, better fit between their actual and desired work hours, more supportive work environments and loyalty to their employers, less burnout or interference between work and family, and shorter commute times.     

The Impact of Poverty on Social Networks and Supports

No abstract available for this article.     

The Social Construction of Romantic Relationships in Adolescence: Examining the Role of Peer Networks,Gender, and Race*

Romantic activity is a social psychological phenomenon. Gender, race, and peer networks are key contexts for understanding the social construction of this behavior as gender‐ and race‐based norms structure feelings and behaviors that define “appropriate” romantic activity and peer networks serve as incubators of this activity. With a nationally representative sample of adolescents (N= 8510) drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study explored the linkages among peer networks, conceptions of idealized romantic relationships and actual romantic relationships, and the ways in which gender and race moderate these associations. Several characteristics of peer networks predicted adolescent attitudes about romantic behaviors as well as actual romantic behavior. Moreover, the linkages among peer networks, romantic attitudes, and romantic behaviors varied by race.     

The Social Worker's Role in Serving Vulnerable Athletes

Athletes are a population group with unique vulnerabilities whose social work-related needs are often not met. Because of the perception that they are young and healthy, athletes are seen as free from mental health challenges and social problems. Yet athletes are at high risk for distress due to pressures to perform, avoid showing pain, hide physical injuries and substance abuse problems, eating disorders and burnout. At the same time, they may have false support systems that are interested in the athlete for social or monetary status. Social workers are broad systems practitioners who can focus on how the environment and other influences affect an athlete's mental health and well-being. Because social workers are strengths-based, they can assist athletes in achieving their highest level of functioning on and off the playing field.     

The Role of the School Social Worker

The aims of our education system are no longer only to impart knowledge on the “3 Rs”. The formal educative process in the school has been slowly broadened and includes not only academic pursuits, but plays a large part in the overall socialization of a child to become a functioning member of society. The school has taken on functions once the prerogative of the family (for example, use of leisure time, vocational guidance, sex and health education) and provides other cultural learning experiences. It has come to be expected of the school that it take responsibility for part of the child's emotional and social development as well as the formal educative aspects of a school's curriculum.¹