Who are my family members? Bridging and binding social capital in family configurations

This study tests the hypothesis that individuals’ identification of family members has an impact on the type of family-based social capital available to them. Data from a sample of college students from three universities in Switzerland (N = 229), provided evidence that seven typical family configurations coexist. These configurations vary with respect to the importance given to partnerships, friendships, stepparents and parents’ relatives. Family configurations based on blood connections provide a ‘binding’ type of social capital, that is, densely connected family networks with low individual centrality, whereas family configurations based on friendship provide a ‘bridging’ type of social capital, that is, sparsely connected family networks with high individual centrality. Postdivorce family configurations are associated with neither type of social capital.