“In the Hood and on the Job”: Social Capital Accumulation among Legal and Unauthorized Mexican Immigrants

Social capital research rarely separates interpersonal networks of reciprocity from trust (a characteristic of some relationships) or civic group participation and has generally ignored Portes's call to investigate determinants, rather than effects, of social capital. Employing data from a survey of randomly selected households of Mexican immigrants, the authors estimate how individual characteristics (including legal status and participation in civic groups) and various neighborhood-level socioeconomic factors influenced the probability of having had social capital—defined parsimoniously as having helped (or having been helped by) someone within one's family or friendship network when in need. Results suggest that higher educated, employed males residing in more densely populated neighborhoods with higher levels of homeownership were more likely to have engaged in such reciprocal exchange. Surprisingly, those who attended at least one labor union meeting during the previous year were less likely. Participation in other civic groups and unauthorized residency status appear to have had no effect.