Enabling and constraining aspects of social capital in migrant families: ethnicity, gender and generation

Abstract This article sets out to examine the use, production and maintenance of social capital in the context of migration through an in-depth analysis of the everyday experiences of young people in Italian families in the UK and Italy. Social capital is usually described in the literature as membership in networks that either helps individuals to get ahead or to preserve positions of power. In this article, I move beyond these one-sided understandings of social capital by exploring both the positive and negative traits of family and ethnic solidarity, as specific forms of social capital for Italian young people By focusing on the experiences of Italian young people, the analysis also demonstrates that gender and generation are crucial axes for interpreting different experiences in participating in strong family and ethnic networks. Keywords: Social capitalmigrant familiesnetworksindividualizationemotionsgendergeneration Acknowledgements This paper is based on material collected as part of a project conducted for the Families and Social Capital ESRC Research Group (see http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/families). I wish to thank Tracey Reynolds and the anonymous referees of this journal for their comments and suggestions.