Abstract
This study examines to which extent neighbourhood ties relate to employment status for the less-well educated inhabitants of 71 neighbourhoods in the Dutch city of Rotterdam. Previous research has produced different expectations as to whether having contact with neighbours is either positively or negatively related to being employed and how this relation differs across neighbourhoods. Two waves from the Neighbourhood Profile survey (N = 8507) were used, which included measures of the contact frequency with neighbours and their willingness to help. We find that for the less-well educated neighbourhood ties have a modest negative relation to employment. Moreover, this relation does not vary across neighbourhoods with different socioeconomic statuses, with the exception of part-time working men. Our research implies that neighbourhood ties in mixed neighbourhoods do not positively relate to employment for the less-well educated, thereby questioning policy assumptions about ‘social mix’. Contributions to the field of neighbourhood studies are made by employing measures of the social networks mechanism and taking into account the conditionality of effects across neighbourhoods.
Highlights
Labour markets play a key role in integrating people into society
This study focuses on the relation between neighbourhood ties and employment for less-well educated groups and in addition, this study investigates to which extent this relation varies across neighbourhoods with different socioeconomic statuses (SES)
Model 1 shows that the contact frequency with neighbours is negatively related to working part-time: the odds ratio (OR) is .938 and significant (a 1⁄4 .01)
Summary
Labour markets play a key role in integrating people into society. Yet, participation among the low and middle educated is generally lower than among the high educated due to several factors such as skills demand and technological innovation (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014; David et al, 2006; Goos & Manning, 2007; Goos et al, 2014), discrimination (Andriessen et al, 2015; Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004), and a lack of social capital (Kanas et al, 2011). In the neighbourhood effects literature, theories of ‘social mix’ suggest that mixed neighbourhoods can reduce these differences in employment, because low and middle educated groups – hereafter referred to as less-well educated groups – may profit from the proximity of. G. CUSTERS resourceful neighbours (see Bolt & Van Kempen, 2013). Ties with neighbours might provide access to the labour market. The role of neighbourhood ties in job attainment is empirically understudied, which is odd to a certain extent because people find jobs primarily through contacts (Granovetter, 1995) and for low educated people – and middle educated people to a lesser extent – the neighbourhood is usually an important social setting (Campbell & Lee, 1992; Fischer, 1982, Van Kempen & Wissink, 2014). This study focuses on the relation between neighbourhood ties and employment for less-well educated groups and in addition, this study investigates to which extent this relation varies across neighbourhoods with different socioeconomic statuses (SES)
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