Immigrant integration and social capital formation: evidence from New Zealand

In this presentation Professor Poot compares immigrant and native-born social capital formation by means of New Zealand data which permits a distinction between indicators of stocks of social capital (viz. feelings of safety, interpersonal contact and inclusion) and indicators of investment in the form of participation in community and voluntary activities, with bonding and bridging activities considered separately. For immigrants, an assessment is made of how social capital formation changes with increasing years in the host country. Additionally, impacts of spatial segregation - both interregional and intra-regional - on social capital formation are identified. The robustness of the results are gauged by replication of the statistical analysis across two different datasets: the 2006 Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey and the 2008 New Zealand General Social Survey. We find that migrants’ social capital and investment are lowest upon arrival in the host country, but migrant-native born differences largely disappear during the first five years since migration. However, ethnicity of the native born and country of birth of migrants matter a lot for social capital formation. Migrant clustering between regions appears to decrease the formation of bridging social capital, while migrant clustering within regions increases the formation of bonding social capital.