235they have a Friendship-oriented configuration and a higher level of educa-
tion. This country also stands out as having more empty networks and no
social capital, thereby revealing the consequences of late modern trends,
which may translate into a greater range of ways in which individuals are
integrated into society, from large and diversified social resources to social
isolation. Overall, social constraints and opportunities in Switzerland
tend to place the individual in more heterogeneous and highly centralized
chains of interdependency, beyond kinship-based groups and providing
only average support across individuals’ important personal relationships.
In contrast, bonding social capital predominates in Portugal, partly due
to the focus on kinship ties and the high density of support, but also due
to a stronger process of suffusion between kin and non-kin ties, which
leads to the embeddedness of the latter in dense family-like bonds. Family
ties in this country thus continue to play a critical role as a major media-
tor of social integration, and increased flexibility in personal relationships
does not always translate into bridging social capital, which makes social
integration more local and closed. Lithuania differs from both Switzerland
and Portugal. Bonding social capital also predominates, in particular due
to the strong focus on nuclear family relationships, but networks are
smaller, and density of support is weaker than in Portugal. As underlined
in previous chapters, these findings suggest that uncertain living condi-
tions and a limited welfare state, along with echoes from almost half a
century under totalitarian communist rule, pressure individuals to direct
their accumulation of social capital to their closest family relationships,
the ones they value as the most trustworthy.
Final Summary
In summary, the contributions to this book shed light on the meaning of
the individualization trends often thought to account for family and per-
sonal life in late modernity. In line with other studies, the book has
shown that although personal networks may be changing in shape, these
changes have not undermined individuals’ sense of relational proximity
to one another nor the construction of personal networks of meaningful
or important relationships. Findings also confirm that, far from the
Conclusions