The (Diverse) Company You Keep: Content and Structure of Immigrants’ Social Networks as a Window Into Intercultural Relations in Catalonia

Abstract

This research examines how the social networks of immigrants residing in a European bicultural and bilingual context (Catalonia) relate to levels of adjustment (both psychological and sociocultural) and to bicultural identity integration (BII). Moroccan, Pakistani, Ecuadorian, and Romanian immigrants residing in Barcelona nominated 25 individuals (i.e., alters) from their habitual social networks and provided demographic (e.g., ethnicity), relationship type (e.g., family, friend, neighbor), and structural (who knew whom) information for each of these alters. Even after controlling for individual-level demographic and acculturation variables, the content and structure of immigrants' personal social networks had unique associations with both types of adjustment and with BII. Specifically, the overall degree of cultural diversity in the network and the amount of Catalan (but not Spanish) "weak" ties (i.e., acquaintances, colleagues, neighbors) positively predicted these outcomes. Amount of interconnectedness between local coethnic and Catalan/Spanish alters also predicted sociocultural adjustment and BII positively. Finally, against a "culture and language similarity" hypothesis, Moroccan and Pakistani participants had social networks that were more culturally integrated, relative to Ecuadorians and Romanians. Results from this study attest to the importance of examining actual intercultural relations and going beyond individuals' reported acculturation preferences to understand immigrants' overall adaptation and cultural identity dynamics. Furthermore, results highlight the interplay between interculturalism experienced at the intrapersonal, subjective level (i.e., BII), and at the meso-level (i.e., having culturally diverse networks that also include interethnic ties among alters).

The Interplay between the One and the Others: Multiple Cultural Identifications and Social Networks

“…Bicultural individuals low in BII experience their cultures as conflictual and dissociated from one another, whereas biculturals high in BII internalize their cultural identities as compatible and feel part of a combined (sometimes third) culture. This may also be reflected in whom they choose to interact with in the first place but also in the way they structure their social relationships—e.g., which friends they introduce to each other and which ones they keep separate (Repke & Benet‐Martínez, ).…”

“…More specifically, race and ethnicity were shown to create the strongest bonds in structuring people's personal environments, followed by age, religion, education, occupation, and gender (McPherson, Smith‐Lovin, & Cook, ). Given the role played by ethnicity in cultural identification, it comes as no surprise that immigrants’ cultural identifications, and the way these identifications are managed, are both related to immigrants’ social networks (i.e., to what degree different ethnic groups are present and how much they are interconnected) as shown in a few studies combining individual‐ and meso‐level perspectives (Mok, Morris, Benet‐Martínez, & Karakitapoğlu‐Aygün, ; Repke & Benet‐Martínez, , ). Figure provides a pictorial representation of basic selection and influence processes pertaining to cultural identifications and acculturation, where ethnic and host cultural identifications may determine the type of individuals (e.g., host nationals, coethnics, others) one selects for one's network and, in return, where the members of the network influence one's identification with the respective cultural groups.…”

The Interplay of Group Identifications and Friendships: Evidence from Longitudinal Social Network Studies

“…If people are asked to assess how many of their friends belong to a different racial group than they themselves, they tend to overreport the share of interracial friendships, whereas sociometric measures give more accurate information (Smith, ). The problem of misreporting friends’ characteristics applies even more to subjective characteristics such as identification or attitudes (Kalter, ; Repke & Benet‐Martínez, ), for example, persons may not know or misreport how strongly their friends identify with a given group. In a network study, this problem does not exist, as all students within the context are sampled, thus providing information on their own identification (and any other individual characteristics).…”

“…In a cross‐sectional nonnetwork study in Germany, Martiny and colleagues () found that contact with native Germans was positively related to Turkish‐origin adolescents’ national identification but not to their dual identification. A study of Moroccan, Pakistani, Ecuadorian, and Romanian immigrants in Catalonia, by contrast, found a positive association between immigrants’ bicultural identity integration and contact with Catalans (Repke & Benet‐Martínez, ). As the authors of both studies stress, however, their cross‐sectional design limits causal inference regarding selection and influence.…”

Functional brain network architecture supporting the learning of social networks in humans

“…In order to navigate these novel social environments, individuals must learn about the complex web of social relationships and cliques that characterize each new social context. For example, integration into friendship networks in the first year of college predicts future success 7 and more diverse social networks in immigrants predict better psychological well-being and cultural adjustment 8 . Understanding how people learn relational information about social networks, including which individuals each person is friends with and which communities each person belongs to, may provide key insights into how individuals adapt to novel social contexts.…”