Personality Traits and Self-Perceived Development of Friendship in the Course of Migration

Social bonds are important for individuals as bonds can have manifold positive impacts, such as emotional or practical support, and may be beneficial for individuals’ well-being or opportunities within society. However, spatial mobility and especially international migration have the potential to diversify and destabilize people’s social bonds and may thus positively or negatively influence the impacts of social bonds. To date, there is a lot of research focussing on how migration affects partnership or family bonds, but there is a lack of research that places friendships at the core of the analysis. This is surprising, as friendships are a fundamental part of people’s system of social bonds. They can be seen as a key factor of social support in coping with stressful situations in everyday life, such as finding a place within the new host society, and are directly related to individual life satisfaction. Therefore, it is important to reflect on how situations in migrants’ circle of friends change in the course of migration. Using data from the first wave of the German Emigration and Remigration Panel Study (GERPS), in this chapter, I address this issue by focussing on self-perceived changes in the circle of friends in the course of international migration. The specific focus here is on how individual personality characteristics such as risk attitude, locus of control, or emotional attachment to the host and the home country (in case of this article Germany) are related to a positive or negative perception of the developments of emigrants’ circles of friends shortly after migration. As research on friendships suggests that specific sociodemographic groups differ in how they manage their networks, this chapter also considers gender- and age-specific perspectives. Results show that individual perceptions of the developments within the circle of friends in course of migration differ. Concerning the factors related to a positive or a negative perception of the development, it becomes apparent that the different personality attributes play a significant role. Concerning differences across sociodemographic groups, I found only slight differences between men and women but stronger differences across age groups.