Residential mobility and the spatial dispersion of personal networks: Effects on social support

a b s t r a c t Using a representative national sample of personal networks, this article explores how the spatial disper- sion of networks, residential mobility and social support are linked. Three issues will be addressed here. Firstly, how is the spatial dispersion of personal networks related to individuals' social characteristics, network composition and residential mobility? Secondly, how do the spatial dispersion of networks, res- idential mobility and their combined effect influence the number and (thirdly) the structure of emotional support ties? Results showed that the extent of the support was affected neither by the geographical dis- tribution of the networks nor by residential mobility. Living far from one's birthplace, however, exerted two distinct, and opposite effects on the support network structure. On the one hand, mobility led to high spatial dispersion of personal contacts, which in turn favored a sparsely knit network centered around the mobile individual. On the other hand, by controlling for the effect of distance between the contacts, we found that individuals that cited long-distance ties tended to be part of more transitive support net- works than those that cited local ties. We interpreted the latter effect as evidence that transitive ties may survive greater spatial distances than intransitive ones. These findings are discussed in view of spatial mobility and social network research. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

[1]  Barry Wellman,et al.  Did distance matter before the Internet?: Interpersonal contact and support in the 1970s , 2007, Soc. Networks.

[2]  B. Wellman,et al.  Different Strokes from Different Folks: Community Ties and Social Support , 1990, American Journal of Sociology.

[3]  I. Guerra Jean Remy, Liliane Voyé (1992), La ville: vers une nouvelle définition?, Paris, L’Harmattan , 1993 .

[4]  Susan Kenyon,et al.  Reshaping patterns of mobility and exclusion? The impact of virtual mobility upon accessibility, mobility and social exclusion , 2006 .

[5]  M. Chamberlain Family narratives and migration dynamics: Barbadians to Britain , 1995 .

[6]  Irina Shklovski,et al.  Residential mobility, technology & social ties , 2006, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[7]  Keith N. Hampton,et al.  The not so Global Village of Netville , 2008 .

[8]  P. Sopp Cluster analysis. , 1996, Veterinary immunology and immunopathology.

[9]  J. Urry,et al.  Social Exclusion, Mobility and Access 1 , 2005 .

[10]  J. Davis Clustering and Hierarchy in Interpersonal Relations: Testing Two Graph Theoretical Models on 742 Sociomatrices , 1970 .

[11]  S. Mcrae Changing Britain : families and households in the 1990s , 1999 .

[12]  S. Fol,et al.  Bouger pour s'en sortir. Mobilité quotidienne et intégration sociale, Éric Le Breton. Armand Colin, Paris (2005), (247 pages) , 2007 .

[13]  Sven Kesselring,et al.  Pioneering Mobilities: New Patterns of Movement and Motility in a Mobile World , 2006 .

[14]  E. Widmer Who are my family members? Bridging and binding social capital in family configurations , 2006 .

[15]  Mark S. Granovetter The Strength of Weak Ties , 1973, American Journal of Sociology.

[16]  R. Milardo,et al.  Families and Social Networks , 1988 .

[17]  J. Mason,et al.  Managing Kinship over Long Distances: The Significance of ‘The Visit’ , 2004, Social Policy and Society.

[18]  Gerard Delanty The Foundations of Social Theory , 2009 .

[19]  S. Feld The Focused Organization of Social Ties , 1981, American Journal of Sociology.

[20]  É. Widmer,et al.  Les réseaux de solidarité dans la famille , 1996 .

[21]  Claudine Attias-Donfut,et al.  Coenen-Huther Josette, Kellerhals Jean, Allmen Malik von, Les réseaux de solidarités dans la famille. , 1996 .

[22]  Douglas A. Luke,et al.  Cluster analysis in community research: Epistemology and practice , 1993 .

[23]  Andreas Wittel Toward a Network Sociality , 2001 .

[24]  Steven B. Andrews,et al.  Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition , 1995, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[25]  E. Butler The Effect of Voluntary and Involuntary Residential Mobility on Females and Males. , 1973 .

[26]  Peter V. Marsden,et al.  Interpretation and interview context: examining the General Social Survey name generator using cognitive methods , 1999, Soc. Networks.

[27]  Matthijs Kalmijn,et al.  Shared friendship networks and the life course: an analysis of survey data on married and cohabiting couples , 2003, Soc. Networks.

[28]  Ulrik Brandes,et al.  Longitudinal analysis of personal networks. The case of Argentinean migrants in Spain , 2010, Soc. Networks.

[29]  Matthew E. Brashears,et al.  Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades , 2006 .

[30]  P. Kennedy Making Global Society: Friendship Networks among Transnational Professionals in the Building Design Industry , 2004 .

[31]  Barry Wellman,et al.  Strength of Internet Ties, The , 2006 .

[32]  Irina A. Shklovski,et al.  Residential Mobility, Technology and Social Ties. , 2007 .

[33]  Claire Bidart,et al.  Evolutions of personal networks and life events , 2005, Soc. Networks.

[34]  J. Urry,et al.  Mobilities, Networks, Geographies , 2006 .

[35]  Ronald S. Burt,et al.  Decay functions , 2000, Soc. Networks.

[36]  Ulrik Brandes,et al.  Social Networks , 2013, Handbook of Graph Drawing and Visualization.

[37]  K. Axhausen,et al.  Size and structure of social network geographies , 2007 .

[38]  Kay W. Axhausen,et al.  Contacts in a shrunken world , 2007 .

[39]  C. Kadushin,et al.  The Friends and Supporters of Psychotherapy: on social circles in urban life. , 1966, American sociological review.

[40]  J. Urry,et al.  Mobile Technologies of the City , 2006 .

[41]  Martina Morris,et al.  statnet: Software Tools for the Representation, Visualization, Analysis and Simulation of Network Data. , 2008, Journal of statistical software.

[42]  L. Magdol,et al.  The People you Know: The Impact of Residential Mobility on Mothers' Social Network Ties , 2000 .

[43]  Kosuke Imai,et al.  Survey Sampling , 1998, Nov/Dec 2017.

[44]  E. Litwak GEOGRAPHIC MOBILITY AND EXTENDED FAMILY COHESION , 1960 .

[45]  B. Wellman,et al.  How Far and with Whom Do People Socialize? , 2008 .

[46]  Selima Sultana,et al.  Social Change and Sustainable Transport , 2005 .

[47]  B. Wellman,et al.  The Internet in everyday life , 2002 .

[48]  Peter Nijkamp,et al.  Social change and sustainable transport , 1997 .

[49]  John Urry,et al.  Social networks, travel and talk. , 2003, The British journal of sociology.

[50]  Michel Grossetti,et al.  Are French networks different? , 2007, Soc. Networks.

[51]  B. Wellman Physical Place and Cyberplace: The Rise of Personalized Networking , 2001 .

[52]  Barry Wellman,et al.  Network Capital in a Multi-level World: Getting Support in Personal Communities , 2001 .

[53]  Barry Wellman,et al.  Are personal communities local? A Dumptarian reconsideration☆ , 1996 .

[54]  J. Coleman,et al.  Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital , 1988, American Journal of Sociology.

[55]  K. Axhausen,et al.  Size and structure of social network geographies; ; Arbeitsbericht Verkehrs- und Raumplanung; , 2007 .

[56]  Barry Wellman,et al.  Domestic Affairs and Network Relations , 1992 .

[57]  S. B. Jones Geographic Mobility as Seen by the Wife and Mother. , 1973 .

[58]  P. Royston A Remark on Algorithm as 181: The W‐Test for Normality , 1995 .

[59]  B. Wellman,et al.  Networks, Neighborhoods, and Communities , 1979 .

[60]  Wayne E. Baker,et al.  The Social Structure of a National Securities Market , 1984, American Journal of Sociology.

[61]  Barry Wellman Domestic work, paid work and network , 1984 .

[62]  Barry Wellman,et al.  The Place of Kinfolk in Personal Community Networks , 1990 .

[63]  C. Fischer Toward a Subcultural Theory of Urbanism , 1975, American Journal of Sociology.

[64]  M. Castells The rise of the network society , 1996 .

[65]  Ronald S. Burt,et al.  Network items and the general social survey , 1984 .

[66]  R. Centor,et al.  Different Strokes for Different Folks , 2012 .

[67]  P. Kennedy Joining, Constructing and Benefiting from the Global Workplace: Transnational Professionals in the Building-Design Industry , 2005 .

[68]  David Krackhardt,et al.  Cognitive social structures , 1987 .

[69]  L. Voyé,et al.  La ville : vers une nouvelle définition? , 1994 .

[70]  C. Fischer To Dwell Among Friends , 1982 .

[71]  B. Wellman,et al.  Does Distance Matter in the Age of the Internet? , 2008 .

[72]  G. Simmel,et al.  Sociologie : Étude sur les formes de la socialisation , 2010 .

[73]  L. Lebart,et al.  Statistique exploratoire multidimensionnelle , 1995 .