The Effect of Different Compositions of Social Ties on Residential Selections

Abstract

Drawing on Granovetter’s and Bourdieu’s concepts of “social location” and “social distance”, this chapter considers the influence of social networks on Whitechapel’s residential pattern. To examine what residential resources and solutions are accessed and generated through social ties with different types of people, this chapter focuses on four types of relationships between undocumented and documented individuals from the same (‘friends’), or different (‘others’) communities, and their influence on residential opportunities. These ties highlight the interethnic relations, stress that undocumented migrants’ ability to successfully engage in vertical bridging or weak ties appears to have a complex relationship to ethnicity—even more than to the individual’s legal status. Undocumented Somali, Turks, Indian, and Pakistani compare to the documented residence of the same groups and to the undocumented Bangladeshis. Schelling’s model results in complete spatial segregation, apparently an outcome of closed bonding networks within these groups. This tendency indicates that despite their legal status, most undocumented migrants are effectively implementing their preferences of living with “friends”.