The “Bridging Effect” of Parents’ Network under the Framework of Bourdieu’s Capital Theory -- The path of cultural capital’s influence on college students’ social integration

Economics, Management and Law, Gannan Normal University, Ganzhou, 341000, China

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Abstract

In today’s Chinese society, the social integration of college students has been widely discussed, but the path of the “bridging effect” of parents’ network affecting college students’ social integration is not clear. This paper analyzes the impact of parents’ cultural capital on College Students’ social integration in three dimensions of employment, culture and psychology based on Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory. The analysis shows that the parent network has the dual functions of “cohesion” and “connection”, and plays a complementary role in the three integration dimensions of employment, culture and psychology, while college students can also actively activate the weak relationship in the home network to make up for the information homogeneity of the strong relationship. Based on this, this paper puts forward two suggestions: first, parents should balance the cohesion and connectivity of the network, and consciously introduce weak relationship resources. Second, policymakers should design compensatory intervention mechanisms, such as alumni mentoring programs, vocational social skills workshops, etc., to help students who lack cultural capital build alternative social networks to promote educational equity and social mobility.