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207
RES n.º 28 (2) (2019) pp. 207-226. ISSN: 1578-2824
ABSTRACT
How young job seekers mobilize their contacts in the
labour market? We look at mobilization of personal
networks of young adults in Barcelona. We consider
the strength of ties and status homophily as mecha-
nisms of personal networks as for the consolidation
of social capital. Our qualitative analysis of 18 in-
terviews with job seekers explores their personal
networks and labour market trajectories. We applied
Social Network Analysis (SNA). Our analysis of social
capital indicates the existence of a relation between
the cultural and economic capitals of job seekers
and the compositional features of their networks. Re-
sults show how networks are similarly heterogeneous
in terms of strength of ties, and mostly homophilous
in educational levels. But these similarities in terms
of social capital come with sharp inequalities in the
patterns of mobilized contacts and their success in
finding a job. These differences can be explained by
the type and volume of capitals of job seekers. Those
with better positions in the social structure and sta-
ble trajectories seem to mobilize fewer contacts more
efficiently, getting better outcomes.
Keywords: Social Capital, Networking, Social Net-
work Analysis, Labour Market, Inequality.
RESUMEN
¿Cómo los jóvenes que buscan trabajo movilizan sus
contactos en el mercado laboral? Analizamos la mo-
vilización de redes personales de adultos jóvenes en
Barcelona. Consideramos la fuerza de los lazos y la
homofília de status como mecanismos de las redes
personales para la consolidación de capital social.
Presentamos un análisis cualitativo de 18 entrevistas
con jóvenes que buscan trabajo (29-34 años), explo-
rando sus redes personales y sus trayectorias. Usamos
el análisis de redes sociales (ARS). Nuestros resulta-
dos dan cuenta de la existencia de una relación entre
los capitales culturales y económicos de los solicitan-
tes de empleo y las características de composición de
sus redes. Las redes son similarmente heterogéneas
en términos de la fuerza de sus vínculos, y en su ma-
yoría igualmente homófilas en los niveles educativos.
Estas similitudes en términos de capital social conlle-
van desigualdades en los patrones de contactos movi-
lizados y el éxito en encontrar trabajo. Las diferencias
se pueden explicar por el tipo y el volumen de capitales
de los solicitantes de empleo. Los que tienen mejores
posiciones en la estructura social y trayectorias esta-
bles parecen mobilizar menos contactos de forma más
eficiente, obteniendo mejores resultados.
Palabras clave: capital social, redes, análisis de
redes sociales, mercado de trabajo, desigualdad.
Artículos / Articles
Inequality Beyond Networking: Personal Networks and Mobilization
of Contacts by Young Job Seekers in Barcelona / La desigualdad más allá
de la movilización de contactos: redes personales y movilización
de contactos de jóvenes que buscan trabajo en Barcelona
*Dafne Muntanyola-Saura
Centre d’Estudis Sociològics sobre la Vida Quotidiana i el Treball (QUIT). Institut d’Estudis del Treball. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
España / Spain
dafne.muntanyola@uab.cat
Oriol Barranco
Centre d’Estudis Sociològics sobre la Vida Quotidiana i el Treball (QUIT). Institut d’Estudis del Treball. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
España / Spain
oriol.barranco@uab.cat
Mattia Vacchiano
Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research LIVES. University of Lausanne Suiza / Switzerland
Mattia.Vacchiano@unil.ch
Recibido / Received: 04/07/2018
Aceptado / Accepted: 25/10/2018
*Autor para correspondencia / Corresponding author: Dafne Muntanyola-Saura. Centre d’Estudis Sociològics sobre la Vida Quotidiana i el Treball
(QUIT) - Institut d’Estudis del Treball, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Campus Bellaterra 08193, Barcelona.
Sugerencia de cita / Suggested citation: Muntanyola-Saura, D.; Barranco, O. y Vacchiano, M. (2019). Inequality beyond networking: personal networks
and mobilization of contacts by young job seekers in Barcelona. Revista Española de Sociología, 28 (2), 207-226.
(Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.22325/fes/res.2019.01)
Revista Española de Sociología (RES) 2019 © Federación Española de Sociología doi:10.22325/fes/res.2019.01
RES n.º 28 (2) (2019) pp. 207-226. ISSN: 1578-2824
Inequality beyond networking: personal networks and mobilization of contacts by young job seekers in Barcelona
208
INTRODUCTION
How young job seekers mobilize their contacts
in the labour market? Networking, understood as
the socially shared meaning of workers mobiliz-
ing weak ties, is just a small part of the reality of
looking for a job. The effective use of social capital
and its differential mobilization patterns are often
neglected within the existing literature. Such omis-
sion contributes to the blackboxing of key concepts
in social capital research such as that of network-
ing, strength of ties, and homophily.
Networking can improve the status and eco-
nomic position of the individuals within the social
structure. But the mobilization of weak contacts
might not help in finding a job, because they de-
pend on the individual’s social position, as well
as on the social attributes of the members of the
personal network. The same source (the social at-
tributes of the personal network) may provide two
different effects (finding a job, or not). Moreover,
the mobilization of contacts, which includes but
cannot be reduced to networking, is an interac-
tional practice determined mainly by the resources
available through personal networks (Lin, 2001;
Bottero, 2007; De Federico, 2007).
Although the “strength-of-weak-ties” thesis
(Granovetter, 1973) underlines the capacity of these
contacts to facilitate richer and more diverse in-
formation for getting a job, weak ties might not be
effective (Bidart et al., 2011), and strong ties may
be a more important source during the job search
(Marsden and Gorman, 2001; Yakubovich, 2005;
Vacc hiano et al. 2018). The prevalence of strong
and weak ties in successful mobilization is open for
discussion. We will thus problematize the conven-
tional take on weak and strong contacts and seek
new empirical evidence for their operationalization.
More specifically, in order to know how job
seekers mobilize contacts, we define the char-
acteristics of their personal networks in terms of
strength of ties, the position of their members in
the social structure in terms of economic and
cultural capitals, and we analyse the presence of
status homophily (Lazarsfeld and Merton, 1954).1
1 Lazarsfeld and Merton (1954) distinguish between sta-
tus homophily and value homophily. The former takes
Following Muntanyola-Saura (2014b), Vacchiano
(2017) and Barranco et al. (2018), we adapt this
classic concept to personal networks analysis and
we understand that this occurs when members of
a personal network occupy a similar position in the
social structure and thus share social attributes
such as gender, age, educational level or occu-
pational status. Moreover, we pay attention to the
labour market trajectories of job seekers and the
weight they might have in the formation of their
career expectations.
Our objectives are two: one the one hand, to
analyze how young job seekers in Spain use per-
sonal contacts to look for a job, and on the other
hand, how they eventually find it. Our claim is that
the economic and cultural capitals of job seekers,
as well as the compositional features of their per-
sonal networks, shape the mobilization patterns of
contacts. Social capital mobilization spawns from
economic and cultural differences between job
seekers, reflecting differences in their resources
and employment aspirations.
Accordingly, we present here the results from
a mixed-method analysis of eighteen interviews
with Spanish job seekers aged 29 to 34. The in-
terviews were carried out with young adults living
in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona in 2014. We
selected the eighteen interviews out of a sample of
250 interviews from which we collected labour mar-
ket trajectories and personal networks. Moreover,
we provide a detailed analysis of three selected
cases with Social Network Analysis (SNA). Through
these cases we describe how differences in the use
of contacts come from economic and cultural in-
equalities between agents, driving the process of
contact mobilization.
In the following section we develop theoreti-
cally the concepts of social capital, strong and
weak contacts, status homophily and career expec-
tations. We include a methods section in which we
explain our tools for data collection and analysis.
We analyse the interviews using the EgoNet, UCI-
NET and Visone softwares and locate the mobilized
contacts within the graph of the interviewees’
into account the socio-demographic or status charac-
teristics as criteria for analysing ties’ traits, while the
latter is based on common beliefs, norms and ideology.
Inequality beyond networking: personal networks and mobilization of contacts by young job seekers in Barcelona
209
RES n.º 28 (2) (2019) pp. 207-226. ISSN: 1578-2824
personal networks. Our findings on the patterns of
contact mobilization are explained from a relational
perspective in terms of volume and density of the
network, centrality measures, presence of homoph-
ily and of strong/weak ties. An analysis of the inter-
viewees’ micro-narratives shows how differences
in educational level and occupational category are
associated with different subjective expectations of
job seekers. We discuss how the educational level
and the occupational category of the interviewees
shape the type and volume of successful mobilized
contacts. The three types of trajectories from our
findings show how job seekers with different lev-
els of economic and cultural capitals have diverse
patterns of contact mobilization. Job seekers with
better positions in the social structure and stable
trajectories seem to mobilize fewer contacts more
efficiently, getting better outcomes.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Since Granovetter’s (1973) work on the impor-
tance of weak ties in finding a job, the role of social
networks in the labour market has attracted wide-
spread attention. However, the literature on the mo-
bilization of contacts is conflated with networking.
In other words, networking is a subcategory that
stands for a category as a whole. Contact mobiliza-
tion is much more than white-collar workers mobi-
lizing weak contacts, which is the socially shared
meaning of networking From our point of view, net-
working is in fact what Lakoff (1987) calls a social
stereotype, concretely one that follows the inequal-
ity of social structure (Muntanyola-Saura, 2014a).
As Smith (2000: 530) suggests, by ignoring how the
contact may have aided in the matching process,
researchers cannot determine the extent to which
job seekers were actually mobilizing and benefit-
ing from their social resources. Behtoui and Neer-
gaard (2010: 774) also consider that more research
is needed to establish how social capital works in
the career progress of individuals and in different
parts of the labour market. In fact, a large portion
of the service market behaves like the art market
(Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014:155). In this win-
ner takes all market there is an individualistic ten-
dency that shapes the mobilization of contacts in
white-collar sectors such as business, marketing
and sales.
The concept of social capital includes that of
networking. Portes (2010) redefines the explor-
atory power of social capital. He follows Bourdieu’s,
Grannovetter’s (1973, 2003) and Burt’s (1992)
structuralism and distances himself from Putnam
(2000), who considers social capital as a collec-
tive value. While Portes (2010) seems to take the
strength of ties as a resolved issue, we agree with
Cruz and Verd (2013) that weak contacts are still a
black box. Portes considers using two types of so-
cial ties: family (or strong) ties and extra familial
(or weak) ties. He claims that Bourdieu considers
only weak ties as social capital, classifying fam-
ily contacts as part of cultural capital. However,
a detailed reading of the two Bourdieu’s (1979,
1986) texts quoted by Portes (2010: 61-64) calls
into question this interpretation. In Bourdieu (1979:
4), strong family ties are those that make possible
a late insertion into the labour market, thus buy-
ing time towards a transitioning adulthood through
higher education. The time for studying that fami-
lies provide generates the institutional capital that
belongs to the more general cultural capital:
“Furthermore, and in correlation with this, the
length of time for which a given individual can pro-
long his acquisition process depends on the length
of time for which his family can provide him with
the free time, i.e., time free from economic necessi-
ty, which is the precondition for the initial accumu-
lation (time which can be evaluated as a handicap
to be made up)”. (Bourdieu, 1986: 49-50).
Bourdieu’s (1979, 1986) social capital includes
also schoolmates, who are strong ties and are cru-
cial for reaching the best jobs (Macmillan et al.,
2011). In addition, Bourdieu (1986) specifically
delimits the three species of capitals and makes
the important claim that social capital, including
both strong and weak contacts, is dependent upon
cultural and economic capital (Bourdieu, 1986:
51). Smith (2000: 530) claims that the use of weak
ties from work does not provide the same benefit to
individuals of low socio-economic status as it does
to those of high socio-economic status. Moreover,
Obukhova and Lan (2013) show that having access
to high social capital does not necessarily mean
that the contacts will be mobilized. As stated by
RES n.º 28 (2) (2019) pp. 207-226. ISSN: 1578-2824
Inequality beyond networking: personal networks and mobilization of contacts by young job seekers in Barcelona
210
Trimble (2013: 593), job seekers first need to ac-
cess the contacts that might be resources for find-
ing a job, and only later will they be able to mobilize
them. Their contacts must have the social attri-
butes relevant to find a job, such as educational
credentials and professional experience (Lin 2001).
Thus, higher economic and cultural capital comes
with more efficient use of the network and better
job outcomes.
Strength of ties is thus a key mechanism for
consolidating social capital. And the literature con-
nects it to another relational mechanism, that of
status homophily. Campbell et al. (1986) modify
Granovetter’s “strenght of weak ties” proposition by
claiming that the weak ties of job seekers with low
economic and cultural capital are less successful
because these ties are being mobilized from small,
dense, homophilous networks that lack influential
ties. Lin (2001) suggests that the social networks
of stigmatized groups provide less access to social
capital because of their dominated position in the
social structure. Smith (2005) shows that job con-
tacts from stigmatized groups fail to provide refer-
rals from their own. Moreover, because of the ho-
mophily principle underprivileged job seekers have
restricted access to social capital. The social struc-
turing of activity encourages individuals to develop
relationships with others who are similar to them
(Feld, 1982). By going about our daily routines we
reinforce patterns of homophily. Thus, our choices
are constrained by the social sorting that occurs in
bars, neighbourhoods, workplaces, schools and the
like, provoking a process of differential association.
As Bottero (2007: 815) explains, differential asso-
ciation “means that disadvantaged groups tend to
associate with people who are similarly disadvan-
taged, while the privileged likewise draw more of
their contacts from the privileged”. Thus, differen-
tial association “helps to reproduce inequalities in
social position and resources”.
In terms of the social construction of expec-
tations, Portes (2010) looks into economic deci-
sion-making, including labour market choices,
as embedded in the social sphere. Portes aligns
himself with his analysis of rationality as a social
structure beyond individual motivation, as well as
with Granovetter (2003) and with Polanyi’s (1989)
concept of embeddedness, which revolutionized
the field of decision-making. Moreover, Bradley
and Devadason (2008), in their study of British
youth (20-34 years), relate their social expecta-
tions to four types of pathways in labour market:
sticking (pursuing a single type of employment);
settling (after a time of uncertainties, acting to
settle the career in a particular job); shifting (shift-
ing between different jobs in order); and switching
(making a conscious choice of a major change of
direction). In this sense, we locate the inequality
of employment expectations within the wider scope
of Sennett’s (2012) take on face-to-face interaction
as a new form of privilege. This author explores the
socialization of cooperation and defines inequality
as a product of the internalization of isolating rou-
tines in childhood. We consider inequality by explor-
ing the narratives of the interviewees, putting our
lens on the process of contact mobilization during
the labour market pathway.
Our theoretical framework suggests different
patterns of contact mobilization among job seekers
depending on their attributes of economic capital,
cultural capital and social capital. We will thus de-
fine the position of the interviewees in the Spanish
social structure, the characteristics of their per-
sonal networks in terms of strength of ties, and we
analyse the presence of status homophily in their
personal networks. In this way, we open the black
box of contact mobilization and look into the em-
pirical roots of social capital in the labour market.
Thus, we follow Herz et al.’s (2015: 2) claim on the
necessity to put greater attention to the subjective
interpretations of social relations. So we also take
into account the employment trajectories and ca-
reer expectations of Spanish job seekers.
METHODOLOGY
This article follows a “qualitative driven” ap-
proach to mixed methods (Mason, 2006) since its
objectives and research design is typical of a quali-
tative perspective A few cases are analyzed inten-
sively and in detail following a case-oriented logic
(Bernhard, 2018). We analize from a holistic view
the joint effects of different phenomena or elements
from each specific case. Consequently, the results
are not intended to be statistically generalizable,
Inequality beyond networking: personal networks and mobilization of contacts by young job seekers in Barcelona
211
RES n.º 28 (2) (2019) pp. 207-226. ISSN: 1578-2824
but they have analytical (Yin, 2014) or theoretical
(Hammersley, 2008) generalisation value. It can be
inferred that the detected processes and realities
may exist in other cases with similar social charac-
teristics. The data collected is narrative —thus of
a qualitative nature— and numerical —or quanti-
tative—. Coherently, we analyzed the former with
qualitative methods, and the latter with quantita-
tive analysis methods from SNA. The results have
been integrated into the joint interpretations of
each case. Thus, at this technical level of data col-
lection and analysis, mixed methods are put at the
service of the objectives and general orientation of
a qualitative nature.
SNA studies have been mostly focused on
structural analysis. Such quantitive methods have
been accused of “structural determinism” (Emir-
bayer and Goodwin, 1994). Nevertheless, qualita-
tive methodologies are necessary because these
social structures are embedded in social relations
that ought to be explained. The introduction of a
qualitative perspective in the study of social net-
works seems fundamental to us to improve the
understanding of the phenomenon of contact mobi-
lization. The processes of collecting and analyzing
the data carried out are explained below.
Data collection
The data for this article come from a qualita-
tive sample of 18 interviewees from 29 to 34 years
old selected from a sample of 250 young adults
from 20 to 34 years old, in which all interviewees
had had at least one activity event in the labour
market. The sample of 250 was part of a wider re-
search project and the interviewees were people liv-
ing in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona in 2014.2
The subsample of 18 interviewees was balanced by
gender with 10 men and 8 women who were work-
ing or looking for a job. We selected the upper age
tier of the overall sample because we were looking
for young adults with an active labour market tra-
2 The whole sample was constructed following a non-prob-
abilistic sampling strategy based on proportional quotas
by gender, age, educational level, occupational category
and country of birth.
jectory of at least 5 years. We applied theoretical
and empirical knowledge for the selection criteria
of the 18 cases by choosing the qualitative strategy
of typological sampling (Verd and Lozares, 2016:
115-120). The objective of this strategy is to obtain
a representation of the different social patterns
in the qualitative sample. Since our theoretical
framework suggests different patterns of contacts
mobilization among job seekers depending on their
attributes of economic, cultural and social capitals,
we selected individuals with different features in
the first two types of capitals and we expected that
they will have differences in terms of social capital.
This strategy provided a sample of 18 interviewees
different enough among them in terms of capitals
to reach our analytical objectives (see Table 1).
The data was gathered by means of a hybrid
survey (Axinn and Pearce, 2006: 103-137) that
combined quantitative and qualitative elements.
The interviews were computer-assisted with Egon-
et Software. The survey asked about the atributive
characteristics and socio-economic background of
the interviewees. We reconstructed the young in-
terviewee’s trajectory by means of restrospective
questions with the physical aid of a qualitative lon-
gitudinal life grid on paper (Figure I). Then, we col-
lected data about the type and effective use of the
interviewees’ personal network, the digital media
and institutional settings involved, and the degree
of success in finding a job. Following the free-list
name generator (McCarty, 2002), we asked for the
personal network of the interviewee, limited to 20
contacts, including family, friends and coworkers.
We also asked for the socio-demographic features
of their contacts, the type of help received from
them in job seeking, the context in which they met,
and information about the intensity and proximity
of their relationship. Finally, we did a short qualita-
tive interview with open questions to capture their
career expectations. Our methodological stance
was to make explicit the bidirectional transfers
between qualitative data coming from the survey
and quantitative data coming from the rest of the
interview (see in Figure I).
In Spain, unemployment was over 15 per cent
from 1980-2014. It fell to a historic low of 8.5 per
cent in 2006, increased again with the economic
recession to a historic high of 27.2 per cent in
RES n.º 28 (2) (2019) pp. 207-226. ISSN: 1578-2824
Inequality beyond networking: personal networks and mobilization of contacts by young job seekers in Barcelona
212
2013, and remained over 23 per cent in 2014. Just
before the recession, Santos (2008) estimated that
the segment of precarious employment character-
ized by poor working conditions (low wages, tem-
porary contracts and/or non-voluntary part-time
work) included a third of the active population.
Temporary employment was over 30 per cent from
the early 1990s to the beginning of the economic
recession and around 24 per cent from then until
2014. Unemployment and precarious employment,
including temporary employment, are crucial fea-
tures of Spanish labour conditions among youth,
immigrants and low-skilled workers. Since 2010,
unemployment among people under 25 years of age
has been above 40 per cent, with peaks of over 50
per cent in 2012 and 2014, while temporary em-
ployment reached 69 per cent in 2014 (Spanish
Labour Force Survey). Integration in employment
of young people leading to stable employment has
decreased sharply, while that leading to precarious
employment continues to grow (Serracant, 2010;
Castelló et al., 2013: 215-216).
Data analysis
Our analysis of 18 cases explores social capital
mobilization in terms of the social attributes of the
job seekers and the number and type of contacts
mobilized during their labour market trajectories. In
Table 1 in the next section we summarize the results
from our analysis, showing the differences between
groups in terms of numbers of mobilized contacts,
successful mobilization, number of strong ties and
presence of homophily in the network. Initially, we
determined homophily in terms of the degree of
commonality of educational level and occupational
category between the interviewees and the mem-
bers of their personal network. Because of disparity
in the data, and because our sample showed sig-
nificant levels of unemployment, we finally applied
educational credentials. We considered a network
homophilous when more than 50 % of all ties had
the same educational level. Homophilous networks
occupied the upper tier of the similarity table, as
levels of homophily are strong, close to 80 per cent.
We identified the interviewees’ position in the
social structure according to their global volume
of economic and cultural capitals. Bourdieu (1979,
1986) defines economic capital as personal income
and properties, taking into account that this could
come from both personal earnings and family in-
heritance. In our operationalization, we selected
as indicators of economic capital the occupational
category of the parents and the interviewee, their
current or last occupational status and the inter-
viewee’s income availability, including both earn-
ings and family help and resources. We grouped
the interviewees’ incomes and their occupational
categories into three categories following the Eu-
ropean Socio-Economic Classification (Rose and
Harrison, 2007: 470-471). There were no significant
discrepancies between the categorisations of these
two variables: higher occupational categories came
with higher incomes. When looking at the interview-
ees’ and their parents’ occupational categories, we
applied dominant position criterion (Erikson, 1984)
in case of discrepancies. For instance, if the inter-
Figure 1. Interview Tools: EgoNet software and Life Grid.
Inequality beyond networking: personal networks and mobilization of contacts by young job seekers in Barcelona
213
RES n.º 28 (2) (2019) pp. 207-226. ISSN: 1578-2824
viewee had a low occupational status and his par-
ents had a middle status, we classified the inter-
viewee as having middle economic capital and we
also chose the highest occupational status between
the mother and the father. As a result, we grouped
the interviewees into three categories of economic
capital: low, which include routine, lower technical
and lower services occupations with incomes lower
than 1000 euros; middle, which is composed of
lower supervisory, lower technician, self-employed
in non-professional occupations and small employ-
ers with incomes between 1000 and 1500 euros;
high, lower and high grade professional, adminis-
trative and managerial occupations and large em-
ployers with incomes higher than 1500 euros.
We measured cultural capital by selecting the
highest educational attainment of both parents
and that of the interviewee. Following the common
in labour market studies, we only took into account
the completed education level. The resulting clas-
sification is composed of three categories: low,
which includes primary or no formal education;
middle composed by secondary education; finally,
high with university educational credentials. We
prioritzed the mother’s educational level over that
of fathers following Bourdieu (1979), a common
trend in social stratification research (Meuret and
Morlaix, 2006; Li et al., 2008).
The characterisation of interviewees in terms of
the global volume of economic and cultural capital
allowed us to classify them into three categories of
social status: the high group is composed by high
economic and cultural capitals; the middle group,
by middle economic and cultural capitals; the lower
group, low economic and low cultural capitals. We
did not have in our sample any contrasting cases,
such as low cultural capital-high economic capital,
or viceversa.
We drew up an inductive definition from the
collected variables of strength of ties. Grannovet-
ter uses duration, emotional intensity, intimacy
and reciprocity, while Marsden and Campbell
(1984) favour the subjective assessment of inti-
macy in strong links over predictors such as type
of relationship. Another alternative comes from Lin
(2001), who, as Cruz and Verd (2013: 169) point
out, defines social capital as four resources or ef-
fects on relationships: the circulation of informa-
tion, the influence of agents, social credentials and
individual status and recognition. We believe this
definition confuses sources and effects because a
source necessarily produces a given effect, which
is far from a given. Lin’s alternative to Grannovet-
ter’s definition is methodologically disappointing.
Moreover, Lin (1999) conflates the binary expressiv-
ity/instrumentality with homophily and heterophily,
thus considering objective status and resources
as explanatory. We consider it unnecessary to take
homophily as an indicator of the strength of rela-
tionships. Moreover, subjective assessment is not
enough to measure a relational mechanism that
comes from the interviewees’ personal networks.
At this point, a claim from Cruz and Verd (2010)
is useful in order to construct our own indicators.
The expressive and social dimensions of relation-
ships, that is the subjective and objective, must
be separated. Moreover, we filtered the variable of
subjective intimacy from our questionnaire with
two more variables: the duration of the relation and
the domain of the relationship. We thus combined a
subjective criterion, that of intimacy, with two ob-
jective criteria, duration and the place of interac-
tion. For instance, if the mother figured as a contact
with low intimacy measures, we still considered her
a strong contact because of the length of the rela-
tionship belonging to the family circle.
Using UCINET software, we analysed the cen-
trality measures of every network and explore the
interviewees’ career expectations from the narra-
tive section of the interview, categorizing subjective
expectations by adapting the categories of Bradley
and Devadason (2008), as cited above. Mobilized
ties are taken from the number of contacts that
are mentioned by the interviewees, that is, those
members from the personal network who helped in
seeking and finding jobs. In terms of centrality, we
considered basic SNA’s measures of density, de-
gree, closeness and betweenness 3. Higher degree,
3 Density is the number of ties divided by the number of
pairs, the percentage of all possible ties that are ac-
tually present; degree (or Freeman centrality ) express-
es the degree of inequality or variance in the network
as a percentage of a perfect star network of the same
size; closeness is commonly defined as based on the
average geodesic distance, which is the mean of the
shortest path lengths between all connected pairs; fi-
RES n.º 28 (2) (2019) pp. 207-226. ISSN: 1578-2824
Inequality beyond networking: personal networks and mobilization of contacts by young job seekers in Barcelona
214
betweenness and intermediation come with more
influence, power and connectivity, independently
of subjective perception. Thus, by introducing SNA
centrality measures we define the mobilization of
contacts relationally and not only by social attri-
butes. Graphs made with Visone software show
alters in different colours, depending on the type of
aid: green for sharing information on job opportuni-
ties, yellow for influence on the process of recruit-
ment, red for both mechanisms. We also labelled
the nodes according to the normative content of the
relation: family (1), professional ties (2), associa-
tions (3), educational ties (4), neighbours (5) and
friends (6). Finally, we analysed the interviewees’
narratives on their career expectations carrying out
a qualitative content analysis (Verd and Lozares,
2016: 307-308) consisting in an interpretation
of these narratives from Bradley and Devadason’
(2008) types of pathways expectations introduced
previously.
FINDINGS
In this section we include, first, the findings for
the analysis of the 18 cases of the selected sample.
Then, we present a detailed analysis of three cases
that illustrate how the interviewees mobilize their
contacts and show different success patterns. The
analysis of these three cases also includes the SNA
measures of the personal networks and the young
adults’ social expectations. The rest of cases (15)
have also been analyzed in these terms but we do
not include their results for the sake of brevity.
General patterns of inequality in network
mobilization
All interviewees in our sample mobilized their
personal contacts to seek employment. This finding
matches the analysis of the whole sample of 250
interviewees provided by Vacchiano (2018: 127).
nally, betweenness considers the relations that are most
central by locating the geodesic paths between all pairs
of actors, counting up how frequently each actor follows
these pathways.
It seems to it be a generalized pattern. However,
there are important differences in the way in which
young people mobilize their personal contacts and
the results obtained. We will point out six relevant
findings.
The first finding is the existence of three pat-
terns of mobilization depending on the proportion of
mobilized contacts: low mobilization, which means
the job seeker mobilized a maximum of 6 contacts
from his network, i.e. a third or less of her con-
tacts; moderate mobilization, having used between
7 and 13 contacts; and high mobilization, with at
least 14.
The second finding refers to the fact that these
three patterns are linked to the social profiles of
the interviewees according to their volumes of
economic and cultural capital. Thus, a low mobi-
lization pattern (3 out of 4 contacts) only happens
among young people with the highest levels of eco-
nomic and cultural capital. The moderate mobiliza-
tion pattern is linked to young people with medium
levels (5/6) and also, but to a lesser extent, those
with low capitals (5/8); conversely, only one inter-
viewee (1/4) with high levels of capital has followed
this pattern. Finally, the high mobilization pattern
appears among low levels of capital (3/8) and, to
a lesser extent, among those of the middle (1/6).
By comparing the groups with the extremes —high
and low capital levels— we consolidate the exis-
tence of the following logic: the higher the volume
of cultural and economic capital comes with less
number of contacts mobilized, and vice versa, the
less volume of capitals, the more number of con-
tacts mobilized.
The third finding is that, according to our defi-
nition of strong and weak ties, it is clear that the
proportion that young people have of both types of
contacts in their network of 20 contacts is variable.
The sample goes from those personal networks with
7 or 8 weak ties and 13 or 12 strong ties, to those
with 18 strong ties and 2 weak ties. Therefore,
what is relevant to our analysis is the absence of
a differential pattern in the composition of the in-
terviewees’ personal networks in terms of strength
of ties. So the composition of social capital is not
related to the volume and type of cultural and eco-
nomic capital of the interviewees, nor to the type
of employment trajectory. This is an important re-
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215
RES n.º 28 (2) (2019) pp. 207-226. ISSN: 1578-2824
buttal to the commonplace beliefs that spawn from
readings of Grannovetter’s (2003) classic approach
to the strength of weak ties, which he links to highly
qualified employees.
The fourth finding points out that having an ho-
mophilous network at the level of educational and
socio-economic status has played mainly in favor
of job seekers with high and medium cultural and
economic capitals, and against those with low cap-
ital. Thus, the majority (7/8) of the former —high
and middle— who have an homophilous network
obtained a job thanks to their contacts, as in the
case of Jan, which is the first case we presented in
the next subsection. Conversely, none of the con-
tacts of the interviewees with low capital and an
homophilous network led them to find a job (4/6),
as shown with the case of Julián, which is the sec-
ond case we provide just below.
The fifth finding is that there are unequal patterns
of effectiveness in the network mobilization of the net-
work to find a job according to the volumes and type
of capitals of the job seekers. Those with the high-
est levels of economic and cultural capital come with
more successful patterns of mobilization of their con-
tacts. All members (4/4) of the group with the highest
levels of these capitals are currently employed thanks
to the a personal contact, while the other two groups
with less capitals show less successful results: 2 out
of 6 cases among the groups of middle capitals, and
3 out of 8 among the group of low capitals.
Additionally, sticking and settling trajectories
correspond to job seekers with high economic and
cultural capitals and low mobilization patterns,
while switching and shifting correspond to young
adults with moderate and low capitals and mobi-
lization patterns.
Table 1. Job seekers analyzed sample: Characteristics and contact mobilization.
Pseudonym Age Gender Social
Status
Pattern of
mobilization (No. of
contacts used)
SuccessfulaStrong
ties
Homophily b ()
Anne 33 W High Low (3) Yes 14/20 Yes
Jan 29 M High Low (5) Yes 10/20 Yes
Noa 29 W High Low (5) Yes 8/20 Yes
Valeri 32 M High Moderate (8) Yes 15/20 Yes
Ciro 30 M Middle Moderate (9) No 9/20 Yes
Tina 31 W Middle Moderate (9) Yes 18/20 Yes
Quen 29 M Middle Moderate (8) No 13/20 No
Mirko 31 M Middle Moderate (10) Yes 11/20 Yes
Sere 33 W Middle High (15) No 9/20 No
Tere 32 W Middle Moderate (8) No 11/20 No
Marta 31 W Low Moderate (12) Yes 7/20 Yes
Alex 29 M Low High (5) No 12/20 Yes
Javier 29 M Low Moderate (11) No 10/20 No
Gracia 32 W Low Moderate (9) Yes 15/20 Yes
Julián 29 M Low High (19) No 11/20 Yes
Nerea 31 W Low Moderate (10) Yes 10/20 No
Dario 30 M Low High (19) No 18/20 Yes
Miki 28 M Low Moderate (8) No 15/20 Yes
a) The interviewee is currently employed thanks to the mediation of a personal contacts.
b) Educational homophily.
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Inequality beyond networking: personal networks and mobilization of contacts by young job seekers in Barcelona
216
Three cases of network mobilization patterns
We present three cases that illustrate the three
patterns of mobilization detected: low, moderate
and high. We selected these cases following a typi-
cal case sampling, a qualitative strategy named
by Patton (2002: 236), which consists in choosing
cases that show what is “typical, normal, average”
(p. 243). We applied this criterion by considering
as typical cases the most prevalent social profile
—according to their levels of economic and cul-
tural capitals— in each pattern of mobilization.
Thus, for the low mobilization pattern we chose a
person with high economic and cultural capital,
for the middle mobilization pattern we took an
individual with middle levels of capitals, and for
the high mobilization pattern we selected an in-
terviewee with low levels of capitals. Furthermore,
we selected these cases because of the richness of
the data and the explanatory power of the collected
narratives on the labour market trajectories.
High economic and cultural capitals with low
network mobilization
Our first case is Jan, 29 years old, born in Bar-
celona, with high cultural and economic capital and
a sticking trajectory in the labour market that began
just after he graduated. Jan has mobilized the five
best-positioned contacts in his network: his parents
and three members of the religious cult he belongs
to. He pursues a single type of employment or career
(Bradley and Devadason, 2008). Specifically, his ca-
reer trajectory is formed by two events: a long period
of studying for a university degree, and a stable em-
ployment event as a teacher in a private university.
I knew since I was a kid what I wanted to do. I al-
ways thought my objective was to be a teacher. I never
worked in other fields, and with sacrifice and study I
tried to achieve this single objective.
Jan’s father has a BA and his mother has up-
per secondary education. He is in business and she
Figure 2. The case of Jan, a 29-year-old male living in Barcelona with high cultural and economic capital and a
sticking trajectory.
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RES n.º 28 (2) (2019) pp. 207-226. ISSN: 1578-2824
is the manager of a medium-sized company (more
than 250 employees). Jan has a monthly income of
¤3000 and rents a flat. The father is the key to the
interviewee’s mobilization pattern: he has the high-
est degree centrality. The mother and the dean of
the university and of the seminary, two members of
the cult, help with job seeking too. The centrality of
the spiritual director marks visually in the personal
graph the existence of a dual structure, the fam-
ily and the cult. High closeness centrality revolves
around three central figures: the father, the mother
and the spiritual director. In terms of betweenness,
we see that the dean is directly connected to both
the father and the spiritual director, the two power-
ful pillars of Jan’s personal network.
Social capital, and specifically strong ties,
seems to be the key to his integration in the labour
market. If we look at Figure II, we see that the dean
of the college is directly tied to the father and to the
spiritual director. Jan explained that his father used
his prestigious professional status and authority to
put in a good word with the dean. Therefore, his
highly homophilous personal network (in terms of
high cultural capital and economic capital, see
Table 1) come with educated contacts that are use-
ful for his employment aspirations since they lead
to a successful mobilization. Family and religion
seem to be counterpowers: we consider all of these
contacts as strong ties because of their equivalent
status, duration of ties, and subjective assessment
(they are classified by the interviewee as very close
or close). Following Jan’s narrative, strong ties are
key to the transmission of institutional cultural
capital. Thus, this corresponds to the type of family
with high economic and cultural capital that, ac-
cording to Bourdieu (1979: 4), can be a safety net
that allows their children to study and be part of
the formal educational institutions as long as pos-
sible, pushing back their transition to adulthood
and the age of their first job.
My family allowed me to focus on what I wanted
to do. I never had to work in anything else. My fa-
ther was the general director of a French Bank and
thanks to his contacts and his power, he got the
dean of the university to consider me ideal to go
directly from student to teacher.
Medium economic and cultural capital with
moderate network mobilization
Tere is 32 years old and is originally from an-
other Spanish region. She has a medium economic
capital and cultural capital and a shifting trajec-
tory. She shows a moderate network mobilization
during her career pathway, mobilizing 7 of 20 con-
tacts. She is studying for a BA in Cultural Mediation
and her parents have primary education. Her father
owns a small business and her mother is not ac-
tive in the job market. Despite low cultural capital
and medium economic capital, she speaks English
and is a university student, so we classified her as
medium cultural capital. She earns around ¤1200
a month, receives no money from her family, and
lives in a shared flat.
Tere’s career is characterized by a rapid shift
between different occupational categories: she has
worked as a flight attendant, retail shop owner, bar-
tender, waitress, and so on. Job switching made for
an accumulation of social capital in terms of weak
contacts. Moreover, she made clear the strong sup-
port received from her family in terms of economic
capital. Her family had an important role in provid-
ing her initial institutional capital, in the same way
as Jan. Her subjective expectations are aspirations
of social mobility, following the middle-class “cul-
tural good will” in terms of Bourdieu (1979).
I always decided everything. Everything [...]
Economically, I’ve had the backing of my parents.
Table 2. The case of Jan. Network measures.
Mobilized
Contacts Density Degree Closeness Betweenness Strength
of ties Homophily
5Central
50 %
n=6.6
32.5 % 39.6 % 21.6 %
SH: yes
10 out of 20
are strong Yes
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Inequality beyond networking: personal networks and mobilization of contacts by young job seekers in Barcelona
218
[...] If I hadn’t had the funding from my parents I
wouldn’t have been able to decide half of what I
have done. I never thought twice about quitting a
job. Having this freedom is very important to do
what one wants.
Tere has a social capital mobilization pattern
characterized by moderate mobilization based on
the use of contacts with higher status and higher
resources in terms of professional category. Her fa-
ther used his capacity of recruitment as a small
business owner to help Tere. This type of aid within
a small family business is a common characteristic
in the Spanish labour market (Aina and Nicoletti,
2014). Tere also mobilized managers and owners
from the work environments, who helped her get-
ting a job in a sector of employment completely new
for her, fashion design.
Figure 3. The case of Tere, a 32-year-old female living in Barcelona with medium economic and cultural capital
and a balancing trajectory.
Table 3. The case of Tere. Network measures.
Mobilization Density Degree Closeness Betweenness Strength of
ties Homophily
752% &
34%
n=5.3
45.7% 47.1%
21.5%
SH: yes
2 units
11 out of 20
are strong No
Inequality beyond networking: personal networks and mobilization of contacts by young job seekers in Barcelona
219
RES n.º 28 (2) (2019) pp. 207-226. ISSN: 1578-2824
Tere’s network has low density and four com-
ponents. Her partner, with the highest degree cen-
trality, marks a structural hole that gives him the
highest betweenness. Father and mother follow him
closely in terms of degree centrality, while other
contacts are less connected: two isolated con-
tacts, a dyadic component and the main network.
Closeness centrality includes her father but also
her mother, a close friend and her ex-boyfriend: all
strong ties. Betweenness centrality is low. Mother
and father also have a role of intermediation be-
tween different parts of the network. The rest of the
contacts are weak, recent and from work. Her net-
work is dual in relation to homophily: she is more
qualified than her family and close friends, who are
the main components of her network, but she mo-
bilizes homophilous links with her weak contacts
from work. Absence of homophily might be an indi-
cator of the low cultural capital of her strong con-
tacts, which is complemented with higher cultural
capital from her weak contacts.
According with these dual compositional fea-
tures, Tere mobilizes both strong and weak ties
from different social domains: the family provides
material support, information and direct place-
ment, playing a crucial role in building a safety
net. Tere uses the contacts with the best resources
in her network to reach job vacancies that allow
her to build a satisfactory balance between life
and work.
[Family’s resources] took away my fear of losing
a job. [...] I made 3000 euros as a flight attendant
and quit the job. [...] For most people the job marks
their life. For me it’s the opposite. I’ve been looking
for jobs that matched my life
Low economic and cultural capital with high
network mobilization
Our third case is that of Julián, a 29-year-old
male, born in Barcelona, with low economic capital
and cultural capital. Julián shows a high mobiliza-
tion of his social capital, having mobilized practi-
cally every single node in his personal network: 19
out of 20. He has completed primary education, like
his parents. He is unemployed, his parents have
low-skilled jobs, and he receives about ¤600 eu-
ros in unemployment benefit plus ¤300 from his
parents. Julián’s trajectory is characterized by sev-
Figure 4. The case of Julián, a 29-year-old male living in Barcelona with a low economic and cultural capital.
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Inequality beyond networking: personal networks and mobilization of contacts by young job seekers in Barcelona
220
eral episodes of unemployment, alternating with
low-skilled and precarious jobs. This is a type of
trajectory very common within this social profile in
Catalonia, as Castelló et al. (2013: 210) show. Ac-
cording to his narrative, his career trajectory has
been shaped mostly by economic necessity, with
no particular expectations in terms of occupational
category and employment conditions. Social capital
seems to be crucial in job seeking and job finding.
Along his trajectory he has shared information and
mobilizing contacts from different social domains,
such as kinships, neighbours and educational ties.
As he stated,
Family has always been there, but work has
come from contacts, acquaintances, friends, and
friends of friends.
Julián’s network measures show low to moder-
ate density, as their contacts have few relationships
compared with the other networks. Julián claimed
that everybody helped during his trajectory, indicat-
ing that he relies on his weak social capital to move
forward in his labour trajectory. There are several
structural holes that empower contacts that have
a higher educational level than Julián. We see that
there are two actors who could act as brokers: 11
and 9, a neighbour and a family member (not his
parents). In the sense, “power” is unequally dis-
tributed in this network and there is a high level of
disaggregation.
This is a very different network from the two
previous ones. Everyone is a helper or informer,
but there are two actors who seem to channel the
weight of the personal network interaction. If we
look at their attributes, we see that one broker has
primary education, while the other has upper sec-
ondary vocational training, so he is more qualified
than the job seeker. The rest of the network does
not go beyond secondary education, so there is edu-
cational homophily in the network. This is a work-
ing class network with low cultural capital, so the
interviewee gets less from his family and friends
in terms of job seeking than the other two cases,
despite their help.
Strong ties are prevalent in Julián’s network.
Family, neighbours and educational ties from
secondary school create a “network of proximity”
that Julián exploits to achieve information on job
opportunities or to get a bridge with employers,
through forms of intermediation. Julián is also
sharply aware of his lack of educational creden-
tials, and talks of his need for certification and
his late start in the educational system, which
probably came after dropping out of school as a
teenager.
I let myself go with life. Last year, when I fin-
ished secondary school, I got A’s and B’s: What
have I done with my life, you know? There was
nothing that I felt passionate about. (···) I need
certificates (···).
Julián’s mobilization of social capital is higher
than that of any other case study considered. This
intense mobilization, prevalently homophilous in
terms of educational level, seems to lead to labour
market segregation, enclosing him in the secondary
segment of the labour market. Recalling Bourdieu’s
(1979) take on social capital, having social capital
in this case is not synonymous with networking and
finding a job, but is strictly related to the educa-
tional and occupational credentials of the members
of the network, that is, “what kind of contact do
we know?” Hence, Julián’s high mobilization does
not correspond to an efficient use of the network.
On the contrary, the social stereotype of networking
mentioned further up applies only to specific mo-
bilization of weak contacts in qualified trajectories
such as that of Tere’s.
Table 4. The case of Julian. Network measures.
Mobilization Density Degree Closeness Betweenness Strength
of ties Homophily
19 40 % to
60 %
n=4.6
25% 55 % 39 %
SH: yes
11 out of 20
are strong Yes
Inequality beyond networking: personal networks and mobilization of contacts by young job seekers in Barcelona
221
RES n.º 28 (2) (2019) pp. 207-226. ISSN: 1578-2824
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
We analysed the process of social capital mo-
bilization of 18 young adult job seekers and pre-
sented a detailed analysis of three cases. After
locating the interviewees in the social structure
in terms of economic capital and cultural capital,
we analysed their use of personal contacts thought
both qualitative and quantitative data, using a SNA
perspective.
We found three mobilization patterns in terms
of contacts: low mobilization, moderate mobiliza-
tion and high mobilization. These three patterns,
without knowing their respective social weights,
are present within job seekers living in the metro-
politan area of Barcelona, but also in the rest of
Spain given that the regulatory and institutional
framework of labour market and social stratifica-
tion of other areas are also similar.
Our empirical exploration of the social capital
of job seekers indicates the existence of a relation
between the cultural and economic capitals of job
seekers and the compositional features of their
networks. Results show that their networks are
similarly heterogeneous in terms of strength of ties,
and mostly homophilous in educational levels. But
these similarities in terms of social capital bring
about sharp inequalities in their patterns of mobi-
lized contacts and also in their success in finding a
job. Differences in success can be explained by the
type and volume of capitals of job seekers.
We found that individuals with the highest
levels of economic and cultural capital mobilize
fewer contacts but are more successful in getting
a job thanks to mediation of a personal contact.
On the contrary, job seekers with less economic
and cultural capitals mobilize more contacts but
are less successful in getting a job thanks to a
personal contact. Consequently, interviewees with
better positions in the social structure and stable
trajectories seem to mobilize fewer contacts more
efficiently, getting better outcomes.
The principle of educational homophily, present
in most of the analyzed personal networks, explains
this different outcome. Homophily favours inter-
viewees with high and medium levels of economic
and cultural capital and goes against those with
lower levels. By differentiating sources and effects,
as explained in our theoretical section following
Portes (2010), we can isolate two particular sourc-
es for this unequal effect in finding a job. First,
contacts with higher social status usually have
more useful contacts that help in looking for a job
(Trimble, 2013), thanks to being or meeting people
with more power in the workplace and, therefore,
with more information and ability to influence the
hiring process. This result matches the analysis
that Vacchiano et al. (2018: 129-130) made of the
complete survey we partially work with here, spe-
cifically for the interviewees’ contacts with medium
and high labour categories. Second, unemployment
might have a greater impact on job seekers with
lower educational status during the years of crisis
in which the fieldwork took place.4 Therefore, their
educational homophily would be associated with a
personal network with more unemployed contacts,
with a lower capacity to provide information on jobs
because they were not employed at that time in any
company nor they belonged to any economic sector,
as Russell (1999) showed in UK.
Additionally, the concept of strong/weak con-
tacts and the place of the mobilization (where and
through which medium) were not to be taken as
given, but rather as products of empirical interac-
tion. The narratives show how contact mobilization
is associated with employment expectations of job
seekers. While the mobilization of weak ties is vari-
able, strong ties are paramount across the personal
networks of job seekers from all social status. Thus,
the family plays a central role in helping youth in
the Mediterranean context (Aina and Nicoletti,
2014; Holdsworth, 2004).
Over and above the social stereotype, network-
ing is a particular type of mobilization of patterns
of contacts. This is a real phenomenon for higher
education trajectories with switching or balancing
professional trajectories such as in Tere’s case. Job
seekers in particular positions in the social struc-
ture with mid-cultural capital and economic capital
(conventionally young, educated middle class peo-
ple), might benefit from exercising a specific social
skill, that of mobilizing weak contacts from their
diverse job experiences, which is what the manage-
4 This trend has been shown by several labour market
studies, e.g. Alós and Lope (2015)
RES n.º 28 (2) (2019) pp. 207-226. ISSN: 1578-2824
Inequality beyond networking: personal networks and mobilization of contacts by young job seekers in Barcelona
222
rial and airport literature calls networking. This is a
trajectory that involves a high level of expectations
and a highly efficient use of the resources available
in the personal network. Savage et al. (2013) give
the name “emergent service workers” to their new
model of class in contemporary Britain, a youthful
urban grouping with limited savings, middle-class
origins and high amounts of emergent cultural
capital, such as music, sports and social network-
ing services, but with low highbrow cultural capi-
tal. This class is marginal in terms of its economic
capital, but its social and cultural capital is high.
It is relatively young and has a high proportion of
ethnic minorities within it. This finding should be
followed up by future research to confirm if it can
be extrapolated as general social trends among
Spanish young adults. We problematized the con-
ventional take on weak and strong contacts and
opened up a new direction of work.
In all, our analysis of personal networks goes
beyond the blackboxing of networking. Building of
social capital as a valued resource to find a job is
dependent, as Bourdieu (1979, 1986) also claims,
on other types of capitals. We operationalized the
strength of ties beyond the social stereotype of net-
working followed by Grannovetter (1973, 2003) and
Lin (2001), taking into account the differences be-
tween the sources and the effects of contact mobi-
lization. Moreover, successful contact mobilization
of job seekers is a social effect that is shaped by
their social status.
In all, our empirical findings go in line with our
central theoretical claim: namely, that networking
does not correspond to the totality of the existing
patterns of social capital mobilization. Following
Sennett’s (2012) rationale of amplifying the scope of
analysis of inequality, the mobilization of contacts
is also another form of privilege. Furthermore, the
inequality in terms of the social status of their per-
sonal networks widens the inequalities that come
with social structure, as claimed by Bottero (2007).
In terms of further work, while we included the
variables of cultural capital and economic capital
here, we should explore fully the variables of gender
and origin. Finally, more can be done to explore the
structures of feeling related to young job seekers in
terms of agency, trajectories and biographical per-
spectives. We need to do more work on the place and
type of social capital that comes with networking.
Only then will we be able to explain how young job
seekers look for a job and eventually get it.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This article is part of the research project “Las
redes sociales en sus diferentes modalidades como
mecanismo de búsqueda e inserción laboral en el
empleo y de apoyo social en los jóvenes” [Social
networks in their different modalities as mecha-
nism in the search for employment and insertion
and social support among young people] (Span-
ish Ministry od Economy and Competitiveness, ref:
CSO2012- 36055) directed by Carlos Lozares Colina
and Joan Miquel Verd (QUIT-IET). Mattia Vacchiano
has benefitted from the FI programme of the Agèn-
cia de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca.
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NOTAS BIBIOGRÁFICAS
Dafne Muntanyola-Saura, Centre d’Estudis
Sociològics sobre la Vida Quotidiana i el Treball
(QUIT) - Institut d’Estudis del Treball, Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona, Campus Bellaterra 08193,
Barcelona (España), dafne.muntanyola@uab.cat.
Dafne Muntanyola-Saura, MA from Stockholm
University and PhD in Sociology by the Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona (2008). She has been a
postdoctoral researcher in Université de Nice and
Fulbrighter at the department of Cognitive Sci-
ence at the University de California, San Diego. The
backbone of her research is building an integrated
model on expert and artistic knowledge. Her inter-
disciplinary focus is on how teams work in appar-
ently unrelated environments such as hospitals,
Inequality beyond networking: personal networks and mobilization of contacts by young job seekers in Barcelona
225
RES n.º 28 (2) (2019) pp. 207-226. ISSN: 1578-2824
TV, sports, visual arts or dance. Her reflexive theo-
retical standpoint explores patterns of distributed
decision-making and works with methodologies
such as social network analysis and video-aided
analysis. She published more than 40 papers. Half
of them are in English, the rest in Spanish, Cata-
lan, French and Italian. They appeared in Theory &
Psychology, Ethnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa, Re-
vue de Synthèse, Quality & Quantity; Gender, Work
& Organization. She has has a particular love for
writing book reviews for journals such as Sociology,
and Feminism & Psychology. She is currently work-
ing on defining the place of interaction in terms of
space and sociality in cultural mediation, social
movements and visual arts.
Muntanyola-Saura, D. and Fernández, M.
(2019) El lugar de la mediación religiosa: Una
aproximación por métodos mixtos. Revista de In-
vestigaciones Sociológicas (REIS).
Muntanyola-Saura, D. and Fernández, M.
(2019). El lugar de la mediación religiosa: una
aproximación por métodos mixtos. Revista Españo-
la de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 165: 101-120.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5477/cis/reis.165.101.
Muntanyola-Saura, D. and. Sánchez-García, R.
(2018). Distributed Attention: A Cognitive Ethnog-
raphy of Instruction in Sport Settings. Journal for
the Theory of Social Behaviour, 48 (4): 433-454.
Muntanyola-Saura, D. (2014) How Multimodal-
ity shapes Creative Choice in Dance. Revista Inter-
nacional de Sociología, 72 (3): 563-582.
Oriol Barranco, PhD in Sociology by the Uni-
versitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the École des
Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He
has been a postdoctoral researcher in the Depart-
ment of Political and Social Sciences at Universi-
tat Pompeu Fabra. He is currently a post-doctoral
researcher at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
and a member of Centre d’Estudis Sociològics so-
bre la Vida Quotidina i el Treball (QUIT) – Institut
d’Estudis del Treball (IET), Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona. His research focuses on the field of So-
ciology of Labor (labor domination and resistance
at workplace, labor process, labor trajectories and
social capital and employment), Research Methods
(ethnographic approaches, mixed methods and
social network analysis) and Social Movements
(trade unionism and housing movements). He has
published in major journals in English and Spanish
such as Quality & Quantity, Transfer: European Re-
view of Labour and Research, Journal for the Theory
of Social Behaviour, Journal for Labour Market Re-
search; Work, Employment and Society, Empiria,
Sociología del trabajo, Papers. Revista de Sociolo-
gia, and Cuadernos de Relaciones Laborales.
Barranco, O., Lozares, C., Muntanyola-Sau-
ra, D. (2018). Heterophily in social groups forma-
tion: a social network analysis. Quality and Quan-
tity. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-018-0777-7.
Barranco, O., Lozares, C., Moreno, S. (2017).
The work process setting and situational contexts
based on socially distributed cognition: an interac-
tive, cognitive and social proposal of analysis. Jour-
nal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 47: 481-501.
Molina, O., Barranco, O. (2016). Trade union
strategies to enhance strike effectivenessin Italy
and Spain. Transfer: European Review of Labour
and Research, 22 (3): 383-399
Mattia Vacchiano, MA from the University of
Bologna and PhD in Sociology by the Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona (2008), he is currently
postdoctoral researcher at the Swiss National Cen-
tre of Competence in Research LIVES of the Uni-
versity of Lausanne. His research addresses the in-
equalities and form of social exclusion experienced
by young people. His methodological tools include
the analysis of longitudinal, network (SNA) and hi-
erarchical data.
Swiss National Centre of Competence in Re-
search LIVES. University of Lausanne, Lausanne
(Switzerland). Mattia.Vacchiano@unil.ch.
Vacchiano, M.; Martí, J.; Yepes, L.; Verd, J. M.
(2018). Personal networks in Job Insertion Among
Young adults in Times of Crisis: An analysis in Bar-
celona. Revista Española de Investigaciones Soci-
ológicas, 161, 121-140. http://dx.doi.org/10.5477/
cis/reis.161.121.
RES n.º 28 (2) (2019) pp. 207-226. ISSN: 1578-2824
Inequality beyond networking: personal networks and mobilization of contacts by young job seekers in Barcelona
226
Vacchiano, M. (2017). Las redes personales en
el mercado del trabajo. Recursos, mecanismos y
desigualdades en el medio juvenil (Personal net-
works in the labor market. Resources, mechanisms
and inequalities among young people). PhD thesis.
Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Vacchiano, M.; Mejia Reyes, C. (2017). Re-
flexiones sobre los juegos de azar en la sociedad
contemporánea: hacia una biografía del riesgo (Re-
flections on gambling in the contemporary society:
toward a risk biography). AtheneaDigital, 17 (2),
79-94. http://dx.doi.org/10.5565/rev/athenea.
