During the 1990s, the concept of social capital took the centre stage in social scientific literature, and was received warmly by a diverse host of individuals and organizations such as academics, governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as transnational entities like The World Bank and UNDP.
The concept was employed in many research areas in a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, political science, economics, public health, urban planning, criminology, architecture, and social psychology. One gross count by Putnam (2002) shows that the number of articles on social capital rose from about 20 in the years preceding 1980 to about 1003 in the latter half of the 1990s. Nothing illustrates the rising star of the concept better than the fact that the World Bank has now included social capital among its main criteria in assessing the feasibility of its projects (Edwards & Foley, 2001).
The main thrust of this fast-burgeoning literature is the simple and intuitively sensible idea that our lives are influenced, not merely by how much we know and what we possess, but also by who we know (Lin, 2001). This is to say that, the nature of our social relations with others in our immediate community or society at large has far-reaching implications for the type of lives we live. Some, for example, have argued that the stock of social capital influences the macro-economic development of a society (Woolcock, 1998; Putnam, 1993; Fukuyama, 1995; Helliwell, 1996a; Helliwell, 1996b; Helliwell & Putnam, 1999). Others have shown that it influences the nature of political structure in terms of its (un)democratic nature (Putnam, 1995, 2000).
A large number of studies have focused on how social capital influences many socioeconomic outcomes for individuals, such as the chances for finding a job (Granovetter, 1974; Lin, 1999; Fernandez et. al., 2000), the degree of success in establishing independent businesses (Cobas & DeOllos, 1989; Renzulli et. al, 2000; Sanders & Nee, 1996; Zimmer & Aldrich, 1987; Portes, 1994), the ability of parents to transfer cultural outlooks to their children, and also to improve their educational attainment (Coleman, 1988, 1990; Parcel & Dufur, 2001; Stanton-Salazar & Dornbusch, 1995; White & Kaufman, 1997), the degree of safeness in a community (Coleman, 1998), not to mention health conditions, life satisfaction, crime rates, levels of civic engagement, church attendance, charity donations, the likelihood of divorce, and the occurrence of suicide.
The purpose of the present study is to view immigrants through the social capital lens. The relevance of social capital for the study of immigrants stems from the argument that, given the limitations they face due to their minority status, immigrants tend to develop stronger communal ties and to draw more heavily on their communal resources. Traces of this argument can be found in works going as far back as the 19th century (see, for instance, Durkheim, 1951[1897]), as well as in recent studies influenced by the middle-men minority thesis (see, Bonacich, 1979).
The argument is further reinforced when it comes to recent immigrants to North America, who are coming mostly from non-European sources. More often than not, immediately after arrival, such immigrants experience a devaluation in the new labour market of the education and skills they earned in home countries, along with explicit and/or systemic discrimination. As a result, they will have little recourse, as Portes (1995b) puts it, “but to band together in search of moral support and economic survival.”
The above argument may be taken as implying that, when it comes to social capital, immigrants are always better off compared to non-immigrants. The present study is an attempt to explore this issue in the Canadian context. The reason for the focus on Canada is the fact that few comparative American Canadian studies have previously shown that the American studies are not greatly relevant and generalizable to Canada (see, for instance, Helliwell, 1996a; Putnam, 2000, 2001). Canadian empirical studies of social capital along ethnic and immigration lines are even scarcer. My search has resulted in three such studies which individually suffer from serious limitations, and collectively provide a mixed bag of findings.
Using the data from a nationwide survey of immigrants and non-immigrants in Canada, the present study revolves around three main questions: (1) Is there any noticeable difference between immigrants and native-born Canadians in terms of their stocks of social capital? (2) Within each of the two groups, are there significant differences among those of different ethnic origins? (3) How do immigrants differ from the native-born, in terms of the degree to which social capital influences their economic performance?
