The Social Capital Experience of International Students in Australia: The Wollongong Experience

Frank Neri () and Simon Ville ()
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Frank Neri: University of Wollongong, http://www.uow.edu.au/commerce/econ/who/index.html
Simon Ville: University of Wollongong, http://www.uow.edu.au/commerce/econ/who/index.html

Economics Working Papers from School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia

Abstract: International university students arrive in their host country denuded of supporting social networks and confronting unfamiliar cultural and educational institutions, an experience that adversely impacts on their wellbeing and academic performance. Our study extends these general notions in the recent literature by investigating how, and to what extent, students renew their social networks. We adopt the social capital framework and conduct a participant survey in order to categorise and measure these different investments in clubs, employment, and friendships. Our results reveal a high degree of variability of social capital renewal between students and, among the more active, there remained a tendency to build close networks only with students from their own county of origin.

Keywords: Social capital; international students; Wollongong Australia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-soc
Date: 2006
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