Relevance of social capital and its implications for children: Study in three Belgrade urban settings

Abstract

The paper aims at questioning some theoretical and methodological issues of relevance of social capital concept for children and its policy implications. The evidence for the analysis comes from the small-scale survey and eight focus group interviews with 13 - 14 year old schoolchildren in three Belgrade urban settings. By using the operationalisation developed by V. Morrow (2003), the author explores the validity in the case of children of social networks, sense of belonging and local identity community, and civic engagement as features and components of social capital. The evidence shows that each of these features has its particularity when children and young people are concerned, which has to be kept in mind when using social capital as theoretical concept and methodological tool. The validity of the concept of social capital in its broader terms for children is questioned in the paper. Considering different kinds of social constraints, one could ask whether it would be more helpful to think about the defined components as "social resources" than as "capital" when we consider children as a social group. This argument has also specific policy implications.

Keywords

• social capital
• children
• Belgrade
• social networks
• community
• sense of belonging
• civic engagement