Friendship Markets, Homophily, and Propinquity: How Institutional Structures at Three Colleges Shape Friendship Networks

• In Event: 21020 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: Social Networks, Identity, and Inequality in Student Experiences

Abstract

How do campus institutional structures shape the ways college students form and maintain friendships? This is particularly important to understand given that colleges are facing loneliness epidemics at the same time students are surrounded by potential friends. Using social capital and relational frameworks, I examine how students form and keep friendships on three college campuses: a public flagship four-year university, a private liberal arts college, and two-year non-residential community college. Drawing on original mixed-methods longitudinal data, primarily interviews with 95 students and egocentric network data on their friendships, I identify ways that campus structures shape friendships. The intensity and rhythms of the initial friendship market, the first weeks of college where students are particularly open as both “buyers” and “sellers” of new friendships, and secondary friendship markets, where later in college students are again particularly open to making friends, differ by campus. Students’ experiences show how the mechanisms of propinquity and homophily shape friendships. Along with the meaningful friendships and weak ties that students form one-on-one, I also examine the connections (or lack thereof) among friends in students’ friendship networks. These findings have implications for the sociology of education as well as research on friendship across the life course.

Author

• Janice McCabe, Dartmouth College