THE INTERACTION OF TIE STRENGTH AND STATUS IN SUPPORT NETWORKS FOR ACCESS TO EMPLOYMENT

Abstract

The literature has acknowledged the importance of social network support in the Spanish labour market for young people's access to employment. However, the effectiveness of this support has not been studied considering both the dimensions of tie strength and difference of status. This article focuses on the articulation of these two dimensions, developing a methodological proposal based on the operationalization of the interaction between tie strength and hierarchy. For this purpose, we use data on the mobilisation of social connections along the labour market trajectory, with which we performed several series of multilevel logistic regressions, taking the type of contract as the dependent variable, in the context of unstable youth labour market trajectories. The results show that both the use of weak ties and social connections having a higher status than the young person are useful to avoid the most precarious employment situation in the trajectories analysed (informal employment). It is also shown that it is possible to rank the types of ties that lead to the avoidance of the most precarious employment situations by considering strong and weak ties in interaction with tie hierarchy.