New Roles for Social Networks in Migration? Assistance in Brazilian Migration to Portugal and the Netherlands

Abstract

The crucial role played by social networks as facilitators of migration has been well established in migration theory (Massey et al., 1993; Massey et al., 1998; Gurak and Caces, 1992; Fawcett, 1989; Tsuda, 1999; Pellegrino, 2004). They have been conceptualised as the ties that link potential migrants in the place of origin to current or previous migrants in the destination countries (Curran and Rivero-Fuentes, 2003, p. 289). Migrant networks are the ‘sets of interpersonal ties that connect migrants, former migrant and non-migrants in origin and destination areas through ties of kinship, friendship and shared community origin’ (Massey et al., 2005, p. 42). Important feedback mechanisms are generated within these networks in the form of information, resources and support that reduce the costs and risks of migration, thereby contributing to facilitate it. Through these feedback mechanisms, migration becomes ‘a path-dependent process because inter-personal relations across space facilitate subsequent migration’ (de Haas, 2010, p. 1589). According to the DiMaggio-Garip typology used by Garip and Asad (2013, pp. 6–7) and presented in Bakewell, Kubal and Pereira (Chapter 1), it is especially through the social mechanism they define as social facilitation or social learning that ‘network peers (typically family or community members) provide useful information or assistance that reduces the costs associated with migration or increases the benefits that might be expected from it’.