How Do Low-Income People Form Survival Networks? Routine Organizations as Brokers

AuthorMario L. Small,Leah E. Gose
DOI10.1177/0002716220915431
Date01 May 2020
Published date01 May 2020
ANNALS, AAPSS, 689, May 2020 89
DOI: 10.1177/0002716220915431
How Do Low-
Income People
Form Survival
Networks?
Routine
Organizations
as Brokers
By
MARIO L. SMALL
and
LEAH E. GOSE
915431ANN The Annals of The American AcademyHow do low-income people form survival networks?
research-article2020
While supportive social ties help to buffer against the
consequences of poverty, few researchers have exam-
ined how people form such ties. New ties are often
formed in routine organizations such as businesses,
churches, and childcare centers, which, beyond being
places to work, shop, or receive services, are institution-
ally governed spaces of social interaction. Based on the
notion of organizational brokerage, we introduce a
perspective that specifies when routine organizations
contribute to tie formation and use it to reexamine data
from existing qualitative studies of such organizations
among the poor. We argue that successful brokerage
will depend on the degree to which an organization’s
institutional norms render interaction among partici-
pants frequent, long-lasting, focused on others, and
centered on joint tasks; and that the ensuing networks
may differ from other supportive ties in the sense of
belonging they may cultivate, the form of generalized
exchange they may engender, and the organizational
connections they may create.
Keywords: social networks; brokerage; network for-
mation; routine organizations; poverty;
social support
A
large literature has shown that social net-
works are essential for the ability of low-
income populations to buffer against the
consequences of poverty (Stack 1974; Nelson
2000; Domínguez and Watkins 2003; Small
2009; Raudenbush 2016; Desmond 2012). In
fact, the literature is so large that one could be
forgiven for believing that being poor somehow
provides automatic access to a network of sup-
portive social ties (Nelson 2000; see Smith
2007). However, many low-income people do
not have such a network (Campbell, Marsden,
Mario L. Small is the Grafstein Family Professor of
Sociology at Harvard University and is an expert on
poverty, inequality, ego networks, and field methods;
his most recent book is Someone to Talk To: How
Networks Matter in Practice (Oxford University Press
2017).
Correspondence: mariosmall@fas.harvard.edu
90 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
and Hurlbert 1986). In fact, survey-based studies have found that poorer people
living in high-poverty neighborhoods have smaller nonkin networks and are more
likely to be isolated than those living in low-poverty areas (see Small 2007; van
Eijk 2010; Burdick-Will 2018; Soller etal. 2018; see also Offer 2012). How, then,
do low-income people form networks of support?
We examine the role of the organizations in which people interact with others
on a routine basis as part of daily life: organizations such as workplaces, churches,
childcare centers, schools, soup kitchens, gyms, bars, neighborhood restaurants,
community centers, and other establishments (Oldenburg 1989; Small 2009; also
Hsung, Lin, and Breiger 2009; Mollenhorst, Völker, and Flap 2008; Mazelis 2017;
Klinenberg 2018). Though routine organizations are arguably the primary means
through which low-income—and other—populations form ties outside the fam-
ily, there are few systematic theories about how this process works; about why
people form new ties in some contexts but not others; or about how, if at all, the
ensuing relations differ from family or other ties in their supportiveness (but see
Small 2009). We develop a theory of how people, regardless of their income,
form social ties in such organizations; probe its applicability based on a reading
of published U.S. field studies in the literature on the poor; propose at least four
factors that distinguish routine organizations in which people are likely to form
ties from those in which they are not; and identify several ways organizationally
brokered ties may differ from other supportive ties.
Our Study
Our study is motivated by substantive, theoretical, and policy concerns. The sub-
stantive motivation is the arguably rising importance of nonfamily support net-
works. Support networks are valuable to individuals at all points in the income
distribution. Yet the last two decades have heightened the need for low-income
families in the United States to secure social, economic, and practical resources
from their networks. Over this period, cash assistance has decreased for low-
income mothers of young children, part of an ongoing restructuring of the U.S.
welfare state (Moffitt 2015, 742–43). The Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 dramatically reduced wel-
fare rolls and made the poorest nonelderly families increasingly have to fend for
themselves. Subsequent studies of how people avoid homelessness, material
hardship, and other difficulties repeatedly found that social networks, especially
family networks, were important (Domínguez and Watkins 2003; Watkins-Hayes
2013; Harvey 2018; see also Newman and Massengill 2006). Yet such conditions
Leah E. Gose is a doctoral student in sociology at Harvard University studying community
organizations and social service provision.
NOTE: We thank Miranda Lubbers, Hugo Valenzuela, and the anonymous reviewers for com-
ments and criticisms that have improved this article. We acknowledge the generous support of
Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences; its Business School; and its Project on Race,
Class, and Cumulative Adversity, at the Hutchins Center.

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