Introduction: Revisiting networks: Setting the conceptual and methodological scene

This chapter presents an overview of how migrant networks have been researched and theorised. In so doing, we highlight some persistent gaps in knowledge about how migrants, and their descendants, forge networks and generate particular kinds of resources, especially in accessing the labour market and developing careers, and we explain how the chapters of this book tackle these issues. By looking not only at migrants but also at the second generation, we reflect on opportunities, but also enduring inequalities, and the ways in which networks may be mobilised to support employment strategies across different sectors and in different European countries. The chapter discusses the importance of disentangling social capital and social networks. Relatedly, we discuss the need to look beyond the ethnic lens and simple binaries of ‘bonding’ versus ‘bridging’ capital, to explore how ties to different kinds of actors, in varied social positions, may facilitate or indeed hinder career development. Referring to new empirical data and theoretically informed analysis, in the various chapters of this book, we build upon but also complicate understanding of ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ ties, not as fixed ties, but rather as a continuum of dynamic relationships that may ebb and flow over time. In the concluding section, we highlight the contribution of this book and also consider the need for further cross-fertilisation of conceptual and empirical innovations beyond migration studies to avoid a silo-effect in social network research.