| This research brings together two significant areas of sociology in a novel way: geographic mobility (i.e. migration) and the study of segregation and homophily. I propose that geographic mobility structurally constrains friendship homophily in different ways for different characteristics, by removing friendship ties formed during youth and replacing them with ties formed in adulthood. Ties made at different stages in the life cycle are formed in settings that are segregated in different ways, which creates differences in the homophily exhibited by the geographically mobile versus the stable. As the settings of youth are more homogeneous with respect to race/ethnicity and religion than those of adulthood, but less homogeneous with respect to age, education, and gender, I predict that geographic mobility will be negatively related to racial/ethnic and religious homophily, but positively related to age, educational, and gender homophily. I test these ideas using network data from the 1985 and 2004 General Social Survey, and my own nationally representative survey data collected in 2007. I find evidence that mobility does decrease racial/ethnic and religious homophily, but find more complicated effects for the other forms of homophily. The effect of mobility on education homophily depends on level of education, the effect on age homophily depends upon age, and the effect on gender homophily, while generally negative, also depends upon marital status. |
