José Luis Molina

Autonomous University of Barcelona | UAB · Departamento de Antropología Social y Cultural

La evaluación de la investigación ha sido una actividad constante de la producción de conocimiento científico. Buena aparte de su formalización se ha realizado en las últimas décadas. El uso de indicadores bibliométricos y cuantitativos de productividad han sido las herramientas más utilizadas, pero en la actualidad existen ya importantes críticas...

This chapter critically analyses the effects that emergent horizontal and peripheral intra-EU migratory mobilities have in the making of Europe from below at its internal margins. The case study draws on the migrant labourers of the so-called ‘farm of Europe,’ a vast agro-industrial district in the South of Spain. This marginal area exhibits the un...

Scientific research is growingly increasingly reliant on "microwork" or "crowdsourcing" provided by digital platforms to collect new data. Digital platforms connect clients and workers, charging a fee for an algorithmically managed workflow based on Terms of Service agreements. Although these platforms offer a way to make a living or complement oth...

Innovation in seafood marketing has multiplied, resulting in a constellation of emerging marketing initiatives from the fishing sector and seafood distributors to cope with resources scarcity, uncertainty, and climate change. Wholesalers, and retailers drawn on Social Network Sites (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Twitter, Youtube, TikTok) to dissem...

Many countries worldwide had difficulties reaching a sufficiently high vaccination uptake during the COVID-9 pandemic. To understand this hesitancy better, we performed cross-sectional research on a panel of 30,000 individuals which were representative for the population of Romania -- a country in Eastern Europe with a low 42.6% vaccination rate --...

The so-called ‘sea of plastic’ in Almería, Spain, is a 450km² area devoted to intensive greenhouse farming managed by 10,000 small farmers who employ a labour force of 50,000 workers, mostly immigrants from Africa and eastern Europe. Romanian immigrants arrived at the beginning of 2000s and have occupied various positions within this agro-industria...

Culture and social structure are not separated analytical domains but intertwined phenomena observable in personal networks. Drawing on a personal networks dataset of migrants in the United States and Spain, we show that the country of origin, a proxy for diverse languages and cultural institutions, and religion may be predicted by specific combina...

Purpose The aim of the paper is to ethnographically detail the poverty-shame nexus in contemporary Spain, and to highlight the contradictions of the newly adopted consumption-based models of inclusion led by charities. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on 39 cases out of a sample of 78 gathered through two long-term research projects, the paper...

Post-Weberian definitions see the state–individual relationship as a “do ut des” one. The state grants protection, education, medical care, and its citizens contribute labour, compliance, and taxes. When this does not occur, it is generally accepted that the citizens are deviating from state goals. However, there are cases where lack of compliance...

Thanks to the latest developments in network-oriented sampling, it is now possible to measure “transnational social fields,” or emergent social structures that connect places or regions in different countries. These structures are instrumental in explaining sociocultural phenomena like the emergence of ethnic or demographic enclaves, social and eco...

Este libro propone un enfoque neoestructural para estudiar la sociedad organizativa como estratigrafías multinivel, tanto intra como interorganizativas, las cuales permiten la acción colectiva. Dichas estratigrafías hacen visible la verticalidad de la sociedad junto con las macroestructuras de clase y ocupación. Hasta ahora, la sociedad organizativ...

Coincidiendo con la reciente publicación por Cambridge University Press de la versión inglesa del libro de Claire Bidart, Alain Degenne y Michel Grossetti (2020) Living in Networks. The Dynamics of Social Relations presentamos una reseña actualizada de las importantes aportaciones realizadas por los autores tanto para la literatura sobre el ciclo d...

This chapter explores the relationship between (im)mobility and informality by analyzing how informal practices evolve when people migrate and move within transnational social fields. The livelihood perspective allows us to analyze informality and (im)mobility as strategies that individuals and households perform to make a living, including the rol...

En el present text relatem l’experiència i implicacions a diferents nivells de la tasca editorial en aquests temps afectats per la pandèmia.

In this article we focus on individuals’ structural embeddedness in transnational social fields (TSFs) and examine how this is related to patterns of international mobility. The main argument is that the structure of TSFs matters for (im)mobility trajectories, and thus all actors (migrants, non‐migrants, and returnees) need to be examined as a whol...

The term «personal network» was first coined by anthropologists of the Manchester School to conceptualise an individual’s immediate social environment, which tends to crosscut different communities and social settings. This concept, now a central theme in the interdisciplinary field of social network analysis, is a powerful tool for understanding a...

Loneliness poses one of the significant problems of our modern post-industrial societies. Current research on loneliness has been developed primarily by psychology, biomedicine, nursing, and other health-related disciplines, showing a surprising number of variables and risk factors involved in the experience of loneliness, along with positive corre...

This paper draws on research analyzing the emotional and relational impacts of poverty and exclusion on charities’ clients in Spain since the 2008–2009 economic crisis, including people experiencing multiple exclusion homelessness (MEH). The study adopts a mixed-methods approach in which twenty in-depth cases were collected in different geographica...

Social networks are ubiquitous. The science of networks has shaped how researchers and society understand the spread of disease, the precursors of loneliness, the rise of protest movements, the causes of social inequality, the influence of social media, and much more. Egocentric analysis conceives of each individual, or ego, as embedded in a person...

We advance bi-national link-tracing sampling design, an innovative data collection methodology for sampling from so-called “transnational social fields”, i.e. transnational networks embedding migrants, returned migrants and non-migrants. This paper describes our contributions to this methodology and its empirical implementation, and evaluates the f...

Publicado el libro “Transformaciones y retos de la movilidad de los Europeos del Este en España: Treinta años después de la caída del muro de Berlín: 1989-2019” Editorial Tirant lo Blanch. https://editorial.tirant.com/es/libro/transformaciones-y-retos-de-la-movilidad-de-los-europeos-del-este-en-espana-treinta-anos-despues-de-la-caida-del-muro-de-be...

El II Premio de investigación de la Fundación FOESSA (2019-2020) nos permitió abordar una investigación sobre la dimensión relacional y emocional de la experiencia de la pobreza en España. Para ello, adoptamos una estrategia de investigación mixta, consistente en la combinación de entrevistas en profundidad (20), análisis de redes personales y obse...

Este análisis estaba motivado por las profundas consecuencias que ocasionó la crisis financiera de 2008, que puso de manifiesto que la pobreza también puede alcanzar a capas sociales que parecían estar relativamente guarecidas de la exclusión social. Por lo general, cuando se habla de pobreza suele pensarse en los efectos negativos relacionados co...

In this article we investigate how migrants’ processes of social (dis‐) embedding in local and transnational contexts unfold over time and illustrate their driving forces. Drawing on unique longitudinal, mixed‐methods social network data of 77 transnational migrants in Barcelona, Spain, we were able to capture changes in social relationships at a m...

Este texto presenta un número especial dedicado a etnografiar los primeros meses de la pandemia provocada por el virus SARS-CoV-2 y las consecuentes medidas de aislamiento y distancia social. Basados en materiales empíricos recogidos entre marzo y mayo del año 2020, los textos etnográficos muestran con viveza la enorme singularidad de este período....

This text introduces a special issue dedicated to compiling ethnographic accounts of the first months of the pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the consequent isolation and social distancing measures. Based on empirical materials collected between March and May of 2020, the ethnographic texts vividly show the uniqueness of this period. It...

El Rey: Diario de un Latin King presents the autobiography of César Andrade, known as King Manaba, from the transcripts of his dialogues with Carles Feixa recorded over a period of 15 years. The book offers a look from within to those labeled as "Latino gangs" by the media and presents a deeply moral vision of its protagonist.

We advance binational link-tracing sampling design, an innovative data collection methodology for sampling from transnational social fields, i.e., transnational networks embedding migrants and non-migrants. This paper shows the practical challenges of such a design, the representativeness of the samples and the qualities of the resulted networks. W...

Aquestes dades corresponen a una enquesta web amb 93 respostes vàlides adreçada a entitats i projectes d'emprenedoria social a Catalunya. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1lp064397FzlebEG_JDCa1rg-32UmBa_jYzYtGnAwobE/viewform L'enquesta es va adreçar a 352 organitzacions i iniciatives recollides a partir de fonts d’internet a Catalunya en octubre-de...

Research on how the poor “make ends meet” typically shows that they are able to do so by relying on dense support networks of family and close friends. Recent research suggests, however, that these networks play a limited role. This article examines the role of informal networks in how sixty-one households in Barcelona, Spain, cope with poverty. We...

In the context of environmental degradation, it is essential to study alternative, more sustainable models of living and production. Ecological Intentional Communities (EICs) present themselves as good examples or “laboratories” of sustainable development, with a small ecological footprint. However, little is known about their heterogeneity and the...

The worldwide burden of chronic illnesses, constitutes a major public health concern and a serious challenge for health systems. In addition to the strategies of self-management support developed by nursing and health organizations, an individual’s personal network represents a major resource of social support in the long-term. Adopting a cross-sec...

Scholars of transnationalism have argued that migrants create transnational social fields or spaces that connect their place of origin to destination areas. Despite the centrality that social networks have in the definition of these concepts, quantitative and mixed-methods social network research is rare in research on transnationalism. This situat...

El concepto de «campesinado» ha sido históricamente objeto de debate, desde posiciones que cuestionan su misma existencia hasta el reconocimiento del papel que desempeña ac-tualmente en la sociedad. Este artículo presenta el caso de los llamados «neocampesinos» en Cataluña, un tipo concreto de nuevo campesinado ligado al movimiento político y medio...

The book "Humanity. Category or condition An anthropological journey” represents a journey on the concepts of humanity and the self based on cases taken from genetics and kinship, ethnohistory and ethnology. Drawing on the concept of Descola's “nature ontologies”, the book illustrates the difficulties of applying a single vision on the nature of hu...

Name generators (NGs) and position generators (PGs) have been used to measure resources embedded in personal relationships, namely social support and social capital, respectively. Comparisons of these measures adopted NGs that only elicit a small number of alters (max. 5). In this paper we explore whether the measurement of social capital with NGs...

In the wake of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), research ethics governance does not just affect the ethical dimensions of social research but also the range of scientific decisions available to researchers. Because of the sensitive status of personal data and the aversion to even minimal risk by what we call “moral bureaucracies”...

Dissemination article available at https://observatoriosociallacaixa.org/-/cuantos-conocidos-tenemos. Adapted by Xavier Aguilar.

El fenómeno del emprendimiento social surgido en Cataluña a partir de la crisis del 2008 se presenta como una alternativa ocupacional promovida por actores financieros y administraciones públicas para responder a dos problemas agravados por la crisis financiera: la necesidad de crear empleo estable y los retos sociales y medioambientales. Este tipo...

UAB-Divulga

La presente investigación aborda el fenómeno de la exclusión del mercado de la vivienda en la ciudad de Barcelona. Hemos optado por una mirada que permita incorporar las experiencias y perspectivas de los habitantes de la ciudad a través de métodos antropológicos. También hemos identificado los mecanismos sociales e institucionales que se han puest...

This study examines the relevance of informal support networks in adoptive parenting ("networks of care"). We try to go beyond the potential difficulties and specific stressors involved in International Adoption (IA) processes and the relevance of the interaction of both formal and informal support networks, since the role of informal personal grid...

El capitalismo ha conseguido ampliar la extracción del valor del trabajo a la totalidad de la experiencia humana y para ello ha desarrollado una estrategia basada en el secreto, la influencia política, la hiperescala, la aplicación intensiva de la inteligencia artificial y la colonización del espacio físico, más allá del medio digital. El libro de...

The theory of mixed embeddedness has been empirically tested in several countries showing how immigrant entrepreneurs utilize network resources coming from both the country of origin and residence, including institutions. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to the networks of immigrant entrepreneurs residing in a microstate. Specific featu...

Written at an introductory level, and featuring engaging case examples, this book reviews the theory and practice of personal and egocentric network research. This approach offers powerful tools for capturing the impact of overlapping , changing social relationships and contexts on individuals' attitudes and behavior. The authors provide solid guid...

Society’s understanding of a conflict is mediated by information provided in mass media, for which researchers stress the importance of analyzing media portrays of stakeholders in a conflict. We analyze information from the Bolivian press regarding the construction of a road crossing the Isiboro-Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS...

Personal network researchers have extensively studied the characteristics and effects of individuals’ closest relationships, but they have paid much less attention to broader acquaintanceship networks, despite evidence that weak ties can also provide social support. In this paper we focus on one aspect of these networks: acquaintanceship volume. We...

The category of space is essential in migration studies and it is implicitly present in the literature about migrant entrepreneurs. However, there is a lack of understanding of how the shifting nature of space as a result of the transnational dynamics of late capitalism's work developments has affected the way migrant economies are framed and appre...

Pocas veces he tenido la sensación de entender tantas cosas leyendo un libro como con Egocentric Network Analysis: Foundations, Methods, and Models, de Brea L. Perry, Bernice A. Pescosolido y Stephen P. Borgatti. Es uno de esos libros donde cada lector encuentra justo lo que estaba buscando, una definición, un concepto, una medida, una reflexión. C...

In the context of chronic illness, the individual’s social and relational environment plays a critical role as it can provide the informal support and care over time, beyond healthcare and social welfare institutions. Social Network Analysis represents an appropriate theoretical and methodological approach to study and understand social support sin...

The concepts “ethnicity,” “multiculturalism,” and “transnationalism” refer to different manifestations and the growing acknowledgment of cultural diversity as one of the constituent features of societies in a globalized world. Thus, the first term refers to the awareness of belonging to a group with particular characteristics (e.g., territorial, cu...

Objeto: La relación entre los Distritos Industriales (DIs) y la inmigración ha sido estudiada hasta ahora a través de casos de las economías étnicas desarrolladas dentro de los DIs por parte de empresarios inmigrantes. En este estudio sostenemos que existe una interacción más general y compleja entre los dos fenómenos que puede dar lugar bien al de...

The concepts “ethnicity,” “multiculturalism,” and “transnationalism” refer to different manifestations and the growing acknowledgment of cultural diversity as one of the constituent features of societies in a globalized world. Thus, the first term refers to the awareness of belonging to a group with particular characteristics (e.g., territorial, cu...

In this paper, we show how we came to explore Beck’s theory of individualization in the light of a qualitative study of livelihood strategies in post-2008 Spain and Cyprus. We observed that experiences of downward social mobility in contexts of welfare retreat and precarious labor conditions were compelling people to build marketed individualities...

In order to contribute to the debate about social entrepreneurship, we take an empirical perspective and describe the phenomenon in Catalonia, Spain, during the financial crises of the early twenty-first century. For this aim, we conducted 43 in-depth interviews with social entrepreneurs, launched a web-based survey with 90 responses, and built a d...

Problema a resolver: La obtención del consentimiento informado por escrito como prueba de la existencia de una decisión individual, libre y explícita puede aumentar la vulnerabilidadde determinados colectivos (e.g. refugiados) o ser contraproducenteen contextos culturalmente diversos (e.g. poblaciones ágrafas o con grupos corporativos de parentes...

Precariousness has been used frequently in recent anthropological debates to designate the subjective and material worsening of living conditions experienced by people around the world. However, it is uncommon to see studies where both elements are carefully juxtaposed to illuminate wider processes of inclusion and exclusion. Starting from its appl...

Book Review - Mario Small (2017). Someone To Talk To. Oxford University Press. Quien haya leído a Mario Small podrá reconocer en este nuevo libro su estilo inconfundible de hacer fácil lo difícil, de explicar historias aparentemente sencillas de personas comunes que sin embargo desafían nuestra comprensión del mundo y nos permiten entender mejor e...

This paper proposes a personal network approach to the study of structural assimilation and structural transnationalism among international immigrants. Structural assimilation and transnationalism are defined as embeddedness in native social networks of the host society, and in co-national social networks of the origin society, respectively. Data o...

This study examines the social capital of novice teachers based on the Social Network Analysis (SNA) to explore its relationships with the professional development. Social capital is conceived as a multidimensional concept that allows exploring the structural, relational and cognitive part of the social interaction. For this purpose, an analysis of...

So far, the relationship between Industrial Districts (IDs; clusters of interconnected local industries) and migrant enclaves (areas with a high concentration of international migrants from a single nationality) has been studied mostly by focusing on the emergence of ‘ethnic enclave economies’ within the district and/or by highlighting racist confl...

Studying grassroots initiatives which aim to respond to environmental and social crisis is of renewed importance nowadays, in the aftermath of the 2008-9 financial crisis in southern Europe. This paper studies people's motivations for becoming part of an eco-community in Catalonia, Spain, through interviews with 29 informants. The research is part...

The emergence of cooperation in human societies has received ample academic attention from different disciplines, and is usually considered as an adaptive response to competition over scarce resources. In this article, the authors review the specific contribution that social anthropology has made to this field of research. They propose that social...

Female sex workers (FSWs) are at risk for multiple health harms, including HIV. This article describes a mixed methods study of the social support networks of 19 FSWs and their primary male sex partners in Tijuana, Mexico. We collected quantitative and qualitative social network data, including quantitative network measures, qualitative narratives,...

We employ social network analysis (SNA) to describe the structure of subsistence fishing social networks and to explore the relation between fishers’ emic perceptions of fishing expertise and their position in networks. Participant observation and quantitative methods were employed among the Tsimane’ Amerindians of the Bolivian Amazon. A multiple-r...

This compendium was created by partners on the OpenMed project and edited by staff at the Disruptive Media Learning Lab at Coventry University, UK, with significant contributions made by expert interviewees in international open education. It is aimed at: (a) Higher education practitioners with involvement or interest in open educational resources...

Eleven case study initiatives of current practices in Open Education (OE) globally, and particularly in the S-M region, are presented. The focus of the compendium is to generate a reliable and evidence-based body of knowledge on OEP in the region to inform the subsequent phases and work packages of the project OpenMed. OpenMed is an international...

La emergencia del enclave rumano en Barcelona se puede interpretar como una de Barcelona se puede interpretar como una de las respuestas a la crisis económica, que ha motivado la movilidad interna dentro del del estado, especialmente hacia Cataluña (y otras áreas).

In order to understand the phenomenon of social/environmental entrepreneurship in Catalonia, we launched a web-survey among “social entrepreneurs” (92 responses), conducted 43 in-depth interviews, and built a database with 347 organizations and/or ventures with an explicit social/environmental goal. This information was complemented with secondary...

Reseña del libro de Elisa Bellotti (2014), Qualitative networks: Mixed methods in sociological research, London: Routledge.

Previous research has shown that social organization may affect the distribution of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) within local communities of natural resource users in multiple ways. However, in this line of research the potential role of informal relationships has mostly been overlooked. In this article, we contribute toward filling this...

Medicinal plants provide indigenous and peasant communities worldwide with means to meet their healthcare needs. Homegardens often act as medicine cabinets, providing easily accessible medicinal plants for household needs. Social structure and social exchanges have been proposed as factors influencing the species diversity that people maintain in t...