Professional Bridges: Migrants' Ties with Natives and Occupational Advancement

This paper examines how Romanian migrants in London use native-born contacts for occupational advancement to offer a more nuanced view of bridging social capital. Bridging ties are often associated with ‘weak ties’ and their beneficial impact on migrants’ upward mobility, yet how they are mobilised and the extent to which they actually help migrants improve their occupational status remain insufficiently understood. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of capital, the paper challenges the uniform and broadly positive view of bridging social capital, showing differences in the role and mobilisation of migrants’ weak and strong bridging ties with natives. Specifically, I show how Romanians’ weak ties with natives in London facilitate access to ‘better’ jobs within lower-skilled sectors, which fail to reflect their qualifications and career aspirations; in their search for commensurate high-skilled occupations, migrants tend to benefit more from strong ties with natives that generate distinct cultural resources often required by prestigious positions and requiring more intense and frequent interaction with members of the host society. I consider two strategies that migrants employ to ‘convert’ strong bridging ties into cultural capital, signalling some limitations of weak ties in facilitating career advancement: first, building and mobilising British friends to act as ‘cultural brokers’ in the job-search process, and second, immersion in British-dominated professional environments to acquire, practise, and demonstrate skills and knowledge specific to the host society. The findings illustrate the varied nature and role of bridging social ties, which may yield different resources, depending on their strength, and also have limitations.