With Some Help From My Friends: Friend Networks and the Creation of Social Capital

• In Event: Reimagining After-School Community-Based Spaces as Places of Pedagogical Possibility, Hope, and Healing

Abstract

Using data collected from a study examining the peer groups of students participating in a college preparatory, community-based youth organization, this paper will highlight how high school students made use of friendships created in this context to navigate educational obstacles as well as barriers to educational access and equity. This paper will show the potential community-based youth organizations have to serve as a counterbalance to such challenges, creating a space for students to develop social and emotional supports, as well as an opportunity for students to develop a network of resources they may otherwise find difficult to access.

Social capital serves as a guide in framing the discussion around the concept of critical friendship. Pierre Bourdieu (1986) and James Coleman (1988) represent foundational work in the understanding of social capital and its use. The paper will illustrate how youth who participate in a community-based youth organization create a form of social capital among one another that helps them to overcome obstacles to their educational achievement. This challenges prevailing notions that youth must rely solely on their connections to adults in order to gain access to social capital.

The paper will draw from research conducted to understand the experiences of youth participating in a community-based youth organization in New York City. Research methods used in the study focused on participant accounts and the meaning they made of their own experiences. The study included seventeen participants with varying lengths of membership with the organization. This paper will focus on the high school participants of the study, using data collected during focus groups and individual interviews. During individual interviews, participants were asked to draw a picture of their educational journey that indicated the ways in which their friends within the organization helped or hindered their educational achievement. The drawings were then used as an additional data source that provided participants a vehicle beyond words for expressing their perceptions and understanding of their friend networks within the organization (Guillermin, 2004).

The study at the center of this paper found that high school study participants built friendships within the organization among their own grade cohort and through common interests. These friends influenced study participants’ thinking about their educational goals by challenging them to maintain high standards for achievement, by recalling shared accomplishments as a reminder of their potential, and by sharing their own goals. Study participants used their friendships within the organization in the short-term to provide access to resources by sharing information or knowledge and as both implicit and explicit forms of motivation for long-term support for their educational achievement.

This paper challenges prevailing ideas on youth and social capital. Findings presented expand Pierre Bourdieu’s definition of social capital by illustrating the power that exists among those he would deem powerless. The paper also adds youth voices to our understanding of educational achievement. Finally, the paper adds community-based youth contexts to the current understanding of educational spaces.

Author

• Tanya Wiggins, Harlem Educational Activities Fund, Inc.