For Further Study

From the social capital types, a path towards multicultural communities can be formed. All people can be placed at some point along this path. At the beginning of this path, individuals possess the bonding type of social capital, which derives from their background. If moving towards multicultural environments, bridging social capital starts to take ground. This demands that the other side of ethnic identity, current, changing ethnic identity starts to develop. The case study pointed out four main learning stages for an individual who is part of a multicultural community.

After becoming part of the intercultural group, conflicts arise. In an ideal situation, after a while, people start to seek for a consensus and finally, a phase of constant learning begins where people integrate their outlooks.

When moving towards multicultural environments, the multicultural outlook will consist of the ethnic identity that changes and the more stable background identity. Identity is one basic quality of relational capital. Even though identity can easily be connected to the cognitive social capital, social capital studies relate it particularly with the relational side of social capital. Besides social relations, ethnic identity is also a sign of inward integration. Thus, ethnic identity is dependent on the relations, which mould the identity. The hypothesis of this study was that multiculturally concentrated social capital evolves best in multicultural relationships and environments. This has proved true, for the change in ethnic identity is dependent on intercultural relations. In the integration of immigrants, both immigrants and natives are in a constant cognitive learning process, which requires relations between immigrants and native-born people.

8.4 For Further Study

This paper raises several suggestions for further studies. There are challenges when social capital concept is applied to the integration of immigrants for typical of social science, the cause and consequences of a social phenomenon remain unknown. It is easy to argue how social capital facilitates the integration process; it generates social networks, the norms of reciprocity and trust

between immigrants and native-born people, it promotes the general integration process, brings information benefits for individuals and enhances the employment opportunities of immigrants through wider social networks. Anyhow, the sources of social capital in the integration process remained unsolved. Though, there were some references that the sources have roots in ethnic identity. Possibly the added identity and learning theories connected to the social capital studies would reveal more of the source of social capital in the integration process.

Secondly, it would be interesting to study the existence of a so-called third culture inside a particular community. It would mean that the background cultures of different ethnic groups would be faded out as a new common third culture takes place in this multicultural community. In fact, the MORO! project participants were in contact with people from different ethnic groups voluntarily.

There is also a need to study further the consequences of a multicultural group where people communicate involuntarily. In this kind of situation, the second conflict phase of the four multicultural learning stages in Figure 9 is the most crucial. It would be interesting to find out what kind of a third culture this kind of trajectory would generate and what would be the last two phases like.

In addition, one further study subject would be to find out what profit multicultural work experience brings to individuals. Recently, there has been suggestions that a multicultural work experience would be seen as an added value in the Finnish labour market. This kind of profit could be explored by an in depth study. The skills of individuals who work in a multicultural work community should be analysed as well as the profits that an employee with bridging social capital brings to his work community.

The main significance of the results of this study for the integration related social capital research has been offering a useful tool for analysing the research subject with a new framework as well as considering the role of the different social capital dimensions in the integration of immigrants. The argument by Woolcock, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know“, holds true also in this study.

Though immigrants and natives would know a lot about each other, oftentimes they do not know each other. This leads again to the roots of the integration process, in which the stress is on the outward integration process and creation of human capital among immigrants. Social capital brings with it the meaning of relational networks, for social structures without relationship are fruitless.

Relationships are the most effective in moulding the cognitive side of social capital; shared systems

As previously mentioned, social capital can be a key for success, a tool for survival or even a reason for exclusion also in the integration process (Ruuskanen, 2003, 79). The bonding social capital among the original population is often a reason for the exclusion of immigrants. Instead, bonding social capital between immigrants is often a tool for their survival, as earlier studies have shown. A key to a successful integration process is seen in this study to be the existence of bridging social capital between immigrants and native-born people.