Author: Constantin Vica

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10th International summer course “Theory, Methods and Applications of Personal Networks” in Barcelona

The ICONIC crew attended, from 1st to 5th of July, the 10th edition of the Summer Course on Personal Networks, held by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. The event was a great occasion for students, academics and even non-academic people to find out about how and why social networks, especially personal networks, influence our everyday life in society. From the spreading of diseases, smoking behaviour, or social support to migration issues and coauthorship networks, the event covered all types of topics and analysis employing different (mixed) methodologies.

During summer course, the team members were involved in different workshops, irrespective of their qualitative or quantitative specific. Now we are more than apprentices in data collection and visualization with Vennmaker (a course taught by Alejandro García Macías with the support of Ignacio Fradejas-García and Paula Escribano, Universidad Autonoma De Aguascalientes, Mexic & Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain) and ready to employ Network Canvas demo (Bernie Hogan, Joshua R. Melville, University of Oxford, United Kingdom) during interviews. Another demo presented was Egoweb, a project developed by UAA & UAB. One central focus of the school was on how to do personal network analysis with R language and environment, from the basics to multilevel modelling (with Tom Smith and Raffaele Vacca, University of Florida, USA). Gabriel Hâncean, ICONIC principal investigator, introduced students to hive-plots with HiveR, that is, a new rational and easy way for visualizing network data. The last hands-on workshops were held by Jürgen Lerner (University of Konstanz, Germany), on comparing personal networks with clustered graphs (and by using EgoNet – visone), and on modelling personal networks with ERGMs.

Besides the workshops, we participated to a series of lectures about the fundamentals of personal networks analysis, research questions, name generators, and qualitative dimensions of personal networks. The sessions were held by Miranda J. Lubbers and José Luis Molina (UAB), professors at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and organizers of the Summer School.

The whole team contributed to the introductory workshop to hive-plots with HiveR, assisting the other participants with different issues encountered during R exercises. Also, the team members attended the ORBITS research project meeting 2019 (more details here). The meeting consisted in a discussion about the status of the fieldwork in Romania, Bistrița-Năsăud County, and on how to grow the Orbits project for the next years.

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Interview with Marian-Gabriel Hâncean

“Recognizing the effort of a researcher is a very important matter, and research leads to innovation.” This is the key point made by Marian-Gabriel Hâncean during his interview for MediaUB, the University news outlet. In 2017, Gabriel won the award for The most prestigious article in Social Sciences section, given by the Senate members of University of Bucharest. The interview, in Romanian, can be accessed here.

The award was offered for his article “Homophily in co-authorship networks of East European sociologists“, published in 2016 in Nature-Scientific Reports. Gabriel talked about how important is social recognition for a researcher, pointing out that in social sciences you can gain visibility generally in two ways: by citation in internationally well-documented journals, and by the impact your research results could have on public policy. He stressed out that it is important to keep in mind that, in fact, it is not the researchers who should receive international recognition, but the results of their work.

Gabriel explained the framework for his article, starting with naming the countries upon he performed the analysis and the scientific domain he was referring to. Romania, Poland and Slovenia were three countries from East Europe he analyzed, all chosen by percentage of GDP given for Research, Development and Innovation sector. Sociologists were in his focus. His analysis points out that there are many practices performed by researchers in order to collaborate. For example, it seems that there is a tendency for visible researchers to collaborate with researchers who in turn also have high visibility, a phenomenon called homophily. On the other hand, there is a tendency for less visible authors to try to co-author with significant researchers in order to benefit from the image of the latter. Looking at Romania, Slovenia and Poland, he observed a mix of practices: on the one hand, the social effect of homophily selection was identified and, on the other hand, the Matthew effect (“the rich become richer”).

Gabriel also talked about his two most important ongoing projects: iCoNic (implemented together with GraphNets Research Group) and Orbits (implemented together with Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona). GraphNets is an interdisciplinary Research Group made of academics, master students and PhD. candidates, coordinated by Gabriel. GraphNets has a functional formal structure, being affiliated to ICUB (The Research Institute of the University of Bucharest).

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José Luis Molina about migratory corridors between Romania and Spain (interview)

José Luis Molina, professor at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, gave a talk for Scena9, an online platform that analyzes and promotes the cultural life in Romania. José Molina was asked about the social relationships between Romania and Spain. The link for the interview, in Romanian, can be accessed here.

José Luis talked about ORBITS, his ongoing project, one developed together with a team from University of Bucharest, coordinated by Marian-Gabriel Hâncean. The aim of the project is to study how European citizens seek better opportunities through intra-European mobility, employing a transnational perspective. The project analyzes two important Romanian enclaves established in Spain, having connections with migrant areas of origin. In the first part of the project, the Castellón – Dâmboviţa migratory corridor (the county where most of the Romanians come from the city of Valencia) was documented. The second corridor will analyze the relation between Roquetas de Mar and Bistrița Năsăud.

At this moment (i.e. October 2018), both teams have just finished the first phase of the project- studying the migration corridor Castellon-Dâmboviţa by interviewing 150 people from Castellon and 150 people from Târgoviște, using a link-tracing methodology. At this phase the project aim is to rebuild the huge network of interactions between these two cities, from Facebook communication to money transfer processes. The second phase of the project will start in the begging of 2019.

Nowadays, Castellon is considered to be the new home for many Romanians leaving from Târgoviște. There is a very wide cultural transformation, possible due to the European Union which allows such an extensive mobility. The question which arises is linked to the reason why Romanians chose Spain as their main destination, together with Italy. Professor Molina proposes an answer closely related to legislation. In the 1990s, the legal framework in Spain and Italy allowed a massive process of migration regulations. Thus, the legislation turned them into countries of destination for migrants. Another important reason was that, during that period, both in Spain and Italy, an explosion in the construction sector took place, and that meant a big volume of unskilled workers who could work in both countries.

José Luis pointed out that ORBITS project helped the research team to realize that in Spain (Castellon) the category of people around whom several connections are build is that of the “firstcomers”, the entrepreneurs. They are essential because they have set the conditions for the migration chain to work. These few people who came in the beginning offered support to any Romanian who arrived in the area.

Those enclaves are interesting to study because they are part of an emerging phenomenon: an enormous number of people migrate to a specific place without someone planning that in advance.

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Whole, personal or egocentric networks?

We had the pleasure to listen to Professor José Luis Molina from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, in Timișoara. He gave an inspiring keynote address titled Whole, personal or egocentric networks? What do we know about personal networks and why it matters. The talk about social networks was linked to the concept of liquid society which refers to emergent, changing social structures, which are partially based on agency and personal interactions.

During his talk, professor Molina pointed out that the study of egocentric/personal networks is especially suited for identifying such structures, linking places within and across nations, and networks of organizations or institutions. Egocentric/personal networks informed social network thinking from its inception but just recently the availability of personal network data with both strong and weak ties have contributed to the development of a growing number of contributions in this area.

Nevertheless, in order to fully develop this approach is necessary to distinguish between egocentric (small number of alters), and personal networks (large number of alters). Thus, while egocentric networks are especially useful for social support and health applications, he contended that personal networks are better suited for the study of emergent social structures.

Drawing on more than a decade of research collecting personal networks with a large number of alters, the presentation aims to take stock of the main lessons learned, and reflect upon the theoretical contribution of personal networks to the understanding of social structures and its dynamics.

The talk was held at the West University of Timișoara, Romania, on September, 15.

The presentation delivered at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, Romania, on September, 17, can be seen below.