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This paper describes the utilisation of support networks for the organisation of informal childcare by working Polish migrant mothers in Dublin. Grounded in a support network perspective the study employs a mixed method approach to elucidate how the mothers use local and transnational relations in their child-minding strategies, but also highlights the obstacles posed by the distant character of the latter ties. In line with previous research on support networks, we find a strong reliance on strong ties in providing instrumental and emotional support (e.g., Wellman and Wortley, 1990) but also that ‘distance’ matters (e.g., Mok et al., 2010) and shapes the network mobilisation strategies of the working mothers. Locally based weak ties, based on various forms of reciprocity, are supplemental in providing ad-hoc crisis support when transnational ties cannot be mobilized. Nonetheless, transnational ties are shown to be crucial in the childcare provision, in particular for longer spells of regular childcare.

The economic transformation in urban China provides a unique opportunity to assess how institutional arrangements shape network-based job searches. Despite several studies on this issue, disagreement exists over how network-based job searches evolve in the Chinese emerging labor market. We argue one way to solve this controversy is to examine the patterns of change in the use of weak ties and strong ties separately. Using pooled data from three cross-sectional surveys in urban China, the results show a steady increase in the use of weak ties and an increasing and persistent use of strong ties in finding jobs between 1978 and 2008. The results also show no systematic difference between the use of weak ties for finding jobs in the market sector versus the state sector. However, they show faster growth in the use of strong ties for finding jobs in the state sector, compared to the market sector.

Researchers have paid increasing attention to the core discussion network, the set of friends and family people turn to when discussing important matters. For nearly thirty years, social network researchers have argued that the network is composed of ego's closest or most important alters. This assumption, however, has not been tested empirically. Using original data on an online representative quota survey of 2000 respondents, I find that 45% of the core discussion network is composed of people whom respondents do not consider important to them. In fact, the core discussion network includes doctors, co-workers, spiritual leaders, and other alters whom ego confides in without feeling emotionally attached to. I examine what respondents consider important matters and why they approach weak ties to discuss these. Placing emphasis on the process through which ego mobilizes alters, I develop two theoretical perspectives, which focus on how people identify those appropriate to a topic and how they respond to opportunities in interactional contexts. Findings suggest that ego discusses important matters with non-close alters at times because they are known to be knowledgeable (targeted mobilization) and at times because they are available when important issues arise (opportune mobilization). Results suggest that recent findings about changes in the core discussion network of Americans are consistent with several different possibilities about the nature of strong ties, including those in which there has been no change at all.

Past research has introduced further distinctions within the strong ties that form our personal communities. This work aimed at a comparison between core and significant ties in terms of their emotional closeness to ego, the social provisions that are exchanged, the relationship maintenance behaviours reported, and ego's loneliness. Measures for all these variables were assessed in a survey study. Evidence for a trade-off between the number of ties and their level of intimacy was obtained such that having more core ties was associated with lower levels of intimacy. Distinct signatures for friends from both sets of ties emerged for friendship maintenance behaviours and social provisions exchanged. Further, social and emotional loneliness were differentially related to the number and the intimacy of core and significant ties.

Network-based job search is especially likely to foster workplace segregation and limit status attainment when information flows through homophilous ties. This paper takes the perspective of information holders and examines how the use of strong versus weak ties – which tend to be homophilous and heterophilous, respectively – differs with characteristics of labour markets in which jobs are located. Using in-depth interviews with entry-level white collar workers I show that information holders with opportunities to mention specific jobs to specific people do so only 27% of the time. Because they hesitate to share information if they are uncertain the information is specifically sought, information flows more commonly to strong ties, whose career goals are more likely to be known. Information is more likely to be shared with weak ties if it concerns occupations for which one may be specifically credentialed, since receiving relevant training serves as signal of interest in such jobs. These finding suggest that the homophily of referrals and their inequality-generating effects may vary across occupations.

Well before the coming of the Internet, strong ties with friends and relatives stretched beyond the neighborhood: the traditional domain of community. Phones, cars and planes allowed people to have contact over substantial distances. But the mere fact that ties stretched over long distances does not tell us the extent to which distance mattered for contact and support in pre-Internet days. Although, scholars have mused about this question, they have not provided empirical evidence. This paper applies multi-level analysis to assess the extent contact and support declines with distance. It shows a marked drop in the frequency of face-to-face contact at about 5 miles. The frequency of contact continues to decrease steadily further away, with substantial declines happening at about 50 and 100 miles. Distance affects telephone contact somewhat differently, with a marked drop only happening at about 100 miles. Distance also has a significant impact on providing tangible support. As our data were gathered in 1978 in the Toronto area of East York, they allow comparisons with how relationships have changed in light of new forms of communication, such as the Internet and mobile phones.

The sociological imagination seems to have been captivated by the engaging paradox of “the strength of weak ties” almost to the exclusion of consideration of what is nevertheless surely the most significant aspect of social relationships — the role of strong ties in everyday life. Yet as Marsden and Campbell (1984) point out, when Granovetter (1973, 1982) was developing the idea of “weak ties” he was reasonably clear about what the characteristics of strong ties were, so it was not necessary for him to pursue the matter in any detail. Recently Marsden and Campbell (1984) using data previously used by Laumann (1973), Marsden and Laumann (1978) and by Verbrugge (1977) have pursued a sophisticated piece of analysis from which they conclude that: a measure of “closeness” or the emotional intensity of a relationship, is on balance the best indicator of the concept of tie strength among those available to us (1984: 498). Confirmation of this point is available from very different material using different methods of analysis.

Patterns of inbreeding (or homophily) and social distance in data from the 1985 General Social Survey on dyads discussing important matters are examined. Stratifying variables include age, education, race/ethnicity, religion, and sex. Discussion relations are most constrained by race/ etnicity, and least by sex and education. Inbreeding effects are present for all five stratifying variables, and account for virtually all structure in dyads classified by race/ethnicity and religions Appreciable social distance biases in the formation of these strong ties are found for age and education, but not for other stratifying variables. The analysis illustrates the use of loginear and log-multiplicative association models in the analysis of cross-classifications of attributes of alters and respondents.

This paper examines the relevance of the “strength of weak ties” model (Granovetter 1973) in devising community development strategies for urban neighborhoods. The policy implications of this model for activities designed to promote neighborhood identification and cohesion are outlined, and Granovetter's specific assumptions about the structure and functioning of urban neighborhood social networks are assessed in light of existing research. Little support is found for the presumed absence of bridging weak ties among urban neighbors, or for the assumption that strong ties create an obstacle to effective political mobilization in working-class neighborhoods. An alternative model of local-level integration is suggested, which retains Granovetter's concept of dense clusters of network ties linked by “local bridges”, but re-examines the role of weak ties in effecting such bridges.

Members of two “research clusters” each in social and biological science were asked how they had first learned of work they had cited in recent publications. While scientists can learn of new work via weak ties, they hardly ever did, because, it is argued, (1) a scientist's goal is to find particularly good work rather than to maximize information about all possibly relevant work and (2) scientists who are strong ties do not necessarily know identical literature.