Friendship-making: Exploring Network Formations through the Narratives of Irish Highly Qualified Migrants in Britain

Abstract

The paper, drawing on narrative analysis of qualitative research with Irish highly qualified migrants in Britain, examines the processes of friendship-making in contexts of mobility. In so doing, I consider what stories of making new friends in new places, reveal about interconnections between selection opportunities but also obstacles, as well as the role of preferences and shared interests. My work contributes to the recent resurgence of interest in place by exploring the salience of proximate, situated, local relationships as sources of emotional support and sociality, even among migrant professionals. Adopting a focus on friendship-making, I seek to go beyond a narrow notion of homophily—defined by an ethnic lens—to understand how migrants draw upon different aspects of identities to forge links and build relationships with a diverse range of people. The paper lies at the nexus of related but distinct bodies of literature—migration, social network analysis and friendship—to explore where, how, why and with who migrants form new friendship networks. I suggest that by connecting these approaches there is potential not only to develop a more thorough understanding of sociality in mobility but also to overcome some gaps within each of these approaches.

Keywords:

• Social Networks
• Friendship-making
• Homophily
• Migration
• Irish Highly Qualified

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Edina Kurdi for her assistance on the research project on which this paper is based. That project was supported by the Third Sector Research Centre and the Irish in Britain organisation. I would like to thank all the study participants who gave so generously of their time. An earlier version of this paper was presented at University of Limerick, I am grateful to Breda Gray and Pat O'Connor for their support. I would also like to acknowledge the helpful suggestions of the anonymous reviewers and the journal editors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

[1] All names changed to protect anonymity.

[2] PGCE—teaching training course.

[3] Reference to a popular Irish brand of tea which has become a by-word for maintaining a connection with Irish traditions (i.e. brewing a cup of Barry's Tea).