Transnational ethnic networks and the creation of immigrant social capital: A multilevel analysis

•This paper examines the role of pre-existing network ties on the formation of immigrant social capital.•The study is based on an original dataset on foreign wives living in Korea.•The main finding is that network ties have a contingent effect.•Weaker ties matter when it comes to friendship size. But only strong ties matter concerning network status.

This study examines the network determinants of post-migration social capital among a group of foreign wives living in Korea. Based on a newly collected dataset, which consists of representative samples of Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese women, it analyzes how and to what extent the survey respondents’ preexisting transnational ties to prior co-ethnic migrants in Korea influence their differential access to social capital. Two measures of social capital are used: the size of friendship network with native Koreans and the prestige score of occupational categories of the network contacts. Multilevel analysis reveals that while controlling for a host of individual- and contextual-level factors, ethnicity-based networks are significant in allowing foreign wives to build social capital in the host society. However, not all network relations have a uniform causal impact. Rather, they have a contingent role in the formation of post-migration social capital.