The Importance of Trust for Social Capital Formation in the Process of Immigrant Integration

In the wake of increasing and seemingly inexorable waves of migration to the developed countries of the world, one of the greatest challenges of our time is to preserve social cohesion in the host societies. To achieve this, the integration of immigrants in the host society is essential; however, too little is known about the causes and dynamics of this process. This study aims to shed some light on the relation between two concepts considered to be important for immigrant integration: generalised social trust and social capital. In this study, social capital is measured by the migrants’ engagement in broad categories of groups, organisations, associations, and activities, in order to include all possible formal and informal social relations which may be relevant for the process of integration. Groups consisting mainly of compatriots are regarded as bonding social capital, while those mainly comprising members of the host society are categorised as bridging social capital. In order to discover whether generalised social trust influences the amount and kind of social capital that migrants build in their host society, two main hypotheses are tested by means of a survey of two immigrant groups in Germany, stemming from two countries who, according to the World Values Survey (WVS) and the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP)1, display a quite divergent level of generalised social trust: Norway (high trust) and Chile (low trust). The first hypothesis, that migrants with a high level of generalised trust build more social capital in their host society than migrants with a low level of trust, has been supported by the results of the survey. The second hypothesis, that migrants with a high level of generalised social trust tend to build more bridging and less bonding social capital than migrants with a low level of trust, produced rather inconclusive results. Among other factors, this is due to the fact that the Chilean respondents’ level of trust measured by the survey deviated considerably from the expectations based on the WVS and ISSP, producing a much smaller sample of migrants with low trust than anticipated. Still, it can be concluded that a higher level of generalised social trust is beneficial to the formation of social capital, which plays an important role for immigrant integration. Therefore, integration policies should encourage immigrants to create social capital and facilitate this process especially for migrants with a low level of generalised social trust, in order to help them step out of isolation and increase their social capital. It is likely that positive experiences with other people will also raise their level of trust, in turn enhancing further social capital formation. The World Values Survey (Wave 5) and the International Social Survey Programme on citizenship have been used as a point of reference for the expected level of trust of the two immigrant groups surveyed.