The impact of social capital in ethnic religious communication networks on Korean immigrant's intercultural development

Abstract

The current study examined the structural composition of the communication networks of Korean immigrants’ ethnic church community, which became the main sources of their social capital. The study measured the effect of their network characteristics (i.e., size, diversity, and centrality) on individuals’ monocultural and intercultural orientations. A total of seven hypotheses, drawn from Smith's (1999) theoretical propositions on intercultural communication networks, were tested. An organizational member survey (N=178) of a Korean immigrant church was used to construct the whole network of the organization. Additionally, the relationships between major constructs (i.e., social capital and intercultural development) were analyzed with hierarchical regression modeling. Results suggested that network diversity had a positive influence on intercultural orientation while network centrality had a positive influence on monocultural orientation among Korean immigrant church members. Network size was positively associated with network diversity after controlling for the effect of English proficiency. Among the three groups of Korean immigrant occupations (i.e., professional, unskilled labor, unemployed), the professional group and the unskilled group showed a significant difference in their intercultural orientation. The research findings suggest that regardless of an individual immigrant's will, over-embeddedness in intra-cultural communication networks can increase one's ethonocentric cultural attitudes and beliefs.