Strategies of Mobility and Networks of Trust: Analysis of Contemporary Tendencies

Abstract

The article deals with the relation of migration strategies to characteristics of networks of trust. The classical approach to the study of trust relations in migrant communities ignores the actual physical movement: the migrants are considered as those who are already localized in space - made a decision to move and/or realised it. It is more productive to combine the concepts of mobility and trust using concepts of social topology (J. Law). It allows to consider moving in physical space as a movement in space of networks. The theoretical resource of social topology allows to put the question of how the parameters of the weak and strong ties influence the migration attitudes. The author offers two hypotheses. The first, the greater the volume of social capital of the individual, the less likely he or she to move because of the greater local «rootedness». The second: a higher number of strong and weak ties activates migration attitudes. The hypotheses were tested on empirical data of all-Russian sociological research «Eurobarometer in Russia». The analysis showed that the second assumption is true and there is a number of reasons for that. A large number of weak ties is a resource that stimulates short-term economic strategies without reference to the place of residence. This type of connection is not directly related to the level of interpersonal trust, which is likely derived from the intensity of communication. People with a wide circle of contacts, who do not trust others, are more prone to internal migration. Developed strong ties also increase migration mood, but in correlation with long-term economic decisions. In particular, individuals with a lot of strong ties are more likely to choose the external migration. The catalyst for such decisions is primarily the expressed distrust to government institutions, which, as analysis demonstrates, can be bound to high interpersonal trust.