Review of the Book by Fabio Sabatini

A review of the book prepared by Fabio Sabatini (LCSR associate researcher) was published in the Journal of Economic Literature (American Economic Association), Labour and Demographic Economics section.

Fabio Sabatini worked on Carl Bankston’s book “Immigrant Networks and Social Capital”. In the review Fabio discussed various definitions of social capital, clarified the dimensions of the concept in social and economic sciences, made a distinction between structural and cognitive forms of social capital. The author highlighted the Bankston`s focus on the structural dimension of social capital, defined as social networks, and further reviewed Bankston`s ideas about migration as social process.

A second issue that Fabio raised in the review was the role of the Internet and Internet-mediated communication in changing modern social interactions. As Bankston puts a strong emphasis on the influence of geographical location, distance, and mobility on the development of migrants’ networks and outcomes, Fabio concluded that Internet allows the physical barriers posed by distance and mobility to be overcome and new forms of migrants’ networks to be generated.

The review of the book can be found in the Journal of Economic Literature (June 2015, Vol. 53(2), Pp. 370-374) via the link.