From Social Capital to Inequality: Migrant Networks in Different Stages of Labor Incorporation

How does social capital vary in the distinct stages (prehiring, hiring, and posthiring) of labor incorporation? Based on interviews with 71 Latino migrant workers engaged in residential construction in Las Vegas, Nevada, and 30 transnational migrants who returned to Mexico after working in the United States, I examined two primary issues: first, the structural labor mechanisms that create hyperexploitation, and second, how, in turn, such processes shape social capital. I discovered, at the prehiring phase, social networks connected to subcontractors and those who attempt to form a labor crew function as social capital, despite what may appear to be bonded labor. At the hiring stage, social capital continues to play a role, yet posthiring labor structures create hyperexploitation and immigrants experience inequality in social capital. In such contexts, undocumented Latinos are unable to retain their social capital as U.S. labor structures such as subcontracting and piece‐rate compensation lead to the subjugation of workers, who can become “ghost workers” and bonded laborers. I conclude that in the posthiring stage, such labor structures create what Lin (2000, 2001) refers to as capital deficit and return deficit in social capital that greatly limit the economic incorporation of Latino immigrants.