Relational constitution of social support in migrants’ transnational personal communities

Abstract

Migrants’ personal communities are often composed of both local and transnational ties. So far little is known about how transnationality influences the provision of different dimensions of social support in migrants’ personal communities. Structural and relational characteristics of personal communities as well as attributes of egos are seen to explain how social support is provided. The study addresses the question of which dimensions of support are transferred across national borders as well as what structural, relational and ego-attributional constituents of migrants’ personal communities form social support. It presents data on personal communities from an online survey with n=234 German migrants in Great Britain. The results show that household, local, national and transnational relationships provide a wide array of social support. Though being restricted in the tangible dimensions of social support (instrumental, social companionship), transnational ties provide more intangible (emotional) support. Conflicts are less prevalent in transnational relationships than within the household. Furthermore, the multi-level analysis of the ego-centred network data shows that both structural characteristics of personal communities (size, density) and ego attributes (e.g. age and gender of ego, time of residence in country of residence) are less relevant than relational characteristics (e.g. contact frequency, tie strength and esp. transnationality) in explaining how migrants receive social support. This result challenges a structural approach to the explanation of social support in personal communities of mobile people.