Exploring the efficacy of African-Americans’ job referral networks: A study of the obligations of exchange around job information and influence

Abstract

Although the work of William Julius Wilson has done much to shed light on the role that social capital, or the lack thereof, has played in perpetuating joblessness among the urban poor, major gaps remain. Specifically, research in the urban poverty literature has almost exclusively theorized and measured social capital in terms of the poor’s network structure and composition. Thus, it is widely believed that the paucity of social capital among the urban poor is simply a function of having few contacts with job information and influence. Few have taken into account the conditions considered necessary to promote the type of personal relationships required for the informal transmission of valued resources; namely, networks of relations in which norms have been created, effective sanctions in place, expectations established, and trust bred. My work contributes to William Julius Wilson’s scholarly tradition by unpacking this primary source of the urban poor’s social capital deficiency.