Social capital of Turkish and Moroccan immigrants in Belgium: determinants of informal social networks

Abstract

In the integration discourse it is often said that native Belgians and members of immigrant communities do not know one another, and that immigrant communities withdraw into their own community. Furthermore non-native Belgians with a Turkish and Moroccan background are often considered as one group. But are their respective integration processes similar? In this article we focus on one aspect of the integration process to answer this question: the acquisition of social capital. Using the theoretical framework of Robert Putnam (2000) we make a distinction between bonding and bridging social capital. In this article we sketch the social embedding of Turkish and Moroccan communities in two former coalmining towns in the dutch-speaking part of Belgium on the basis of 740 face-to-face interviews. In contrast with available studies on the social capital of members of immigrant communities we will not focus on formal memberships, but on the informal social networks. Three research questions are central: How much informal contact is there between members of the native and immigrant communities? Have members of the Turkish community acquired as much (or as little) bonding and briding social capital as members of the Moroccan community? What factors determine the acquisition of bridging social capital by members of immigrant communities? A thorough analysis (multiple regression) of friendships and neighbour contacts indicates that a high degree of informal bonding social capital does not hamper informal social contacts with the native majority group (bridging social capital). Members of immigrant communities well endowed with bonding social capital also acquire plenty of bridging social capital. Another crucial factor of the acquisition of informal bridging social captial is Dutch language proficiency.