231The Impact of Historical, Social, and Welfare
Contexts on Personal Networks
Comparison of personal configurations across three countries with very
distinct historical and social pathways provided some surprising findings
as well as some expected dissimilarities. A first important conclusion is
that national context was found to be a consistent and strong predictor of
personal networks, the social capital developed therein and the type of
overlap between personal and family networks. Moreover, the impact of
national context on the patterning of personal networks is maintained
and even reinforced when controlling for biographical and social struc-
tural factors. However, rather than questioning the importance of late
modern values in a globalized world, the impact of national context is
interpreted by the authors of this book as a crucial reminder that private
life and personal relationships must be conceptualized at the intersection
of individual, national, and global contexts and times, hence the impor-
tance of combining life course and social structural perspectives.
To what extent then are personal networks and their shaping factors
country-specific? Three main findings may be inferred from the data.
First, there are significant national differences regarding the extension
and composition of networks. The data are somewhat surprising, not so
much because they reveal diversity, but rather due to the fact that they
confirm the persistent and systematic impact of nation-state specificities
and path dependency in the face of globalization. The most contrasting
countries are Switzerland and Lithuania. Portugal is in an intermediate
position, as the country is similar to Switzerland with regard to some
characteristics and closer to Lithuania with regard to others.
Personal networks in Lithuania are much smaller than in the other two
countries, strongly confined to kinship ties, and the salience of past
co- residence as a mechanism of relational proximity is striking in both
past and present. The importance of co-residence in this country may be
explained by the fact that multigenerational living arrangements are still
common, not only driven by economic uncertainty and housing prob-
lems but also due to the communist inheritance of collective housing.
The recent impact of high unemployment, welfare state retrenchment,
Conclusions