Department of Methodology Seminar Series

Upward network influence and social integration: Do student friendships stimulate interethnic parental ties?

The size and composition of a person’s social network is a critical component of their social capital. For immigrants, social ties with natives can be especially beneficial. Whereas social networks of immigrants and their children are typically segregated along ethnic lines, the degree of segregation varies across individual and community characteristics. Schools provide a unique opportunity for students to meet and befriend ethnically different peers. We propose that interethnic friendships between students may in turn lead to interethnic social ties between their parents. This way, social integration of immigrant students can contribute to the social integration and social capital of their parents, some of whom might otherwise not have access to non-immigrant networks.

This project applies multilevel stochastic actor-oriented models, developed for the analysis of social network panel data, to classroom networks of students and their parents in Germany. We analyse two types of networks: friendships between students (best friends in class) and keeping-in-touch networks between parents (parents who call each other or get together from time to time). We analyse the co-evolution of these two networks between two time points (age 14 and age 15 of the students). We find that parents are more likely to form and maintain social ties with other parents if their children are friends, and there is no significant difference between same-ethnic and interethnic ties in this regard. This way, students’ interethnic friendships can indeed create interethnic ties for their parents. However, we also find that students’ friendship networks are ethnically segregated in the first place, limiting how much they can contribute to diversifying the networks of their parents.