Friends and Foes in the Occupational Career. The Influence of Sweet and Sour Social Capital on the Labour Market. Friends and Foes in the Occupa-tional Career.

Will people with friends experience profit and will people with foes experience harm on the labour market? The words ‘friends’ and ‘foes’ mean something else than in every day life, that is people who have helped or hindered someone in the past and/or are willing to do so in the future. From this research it shows that friends with a relatively high status cause an increase and foes, especially foes with a relatively high status, cause a decrease in someone’s labour market position. Very innovative in this dissertation (apart from including foes) is that so-called ‘immobile’ people are also considered, that is people who stay in the same position on the labour market. It appears that people who have friends on their own status level linger in the same labour market position more often. People with foes on their own status level appear to ‘flee’ from their jobs more often, or they become unemployed. Contemporary studies on the influence of social capital on the labour market have mainly focused on the positive side of social relationships – how people can help each other in their careers. This study adopts a different approach by also including the negative side of social relationships – how people can harm each other. Old questions regarding the positive side of social capital (sweet social capital as constituted by ‘friends’) are extended to the negative side of social capital (sour social capital as constituted by ‘foes’). Furthermore some important improvements are made on earlier research, not only by including foes, but also by curing some methodological flaws. And some new questions regarding friends and foes on the labour market are asked and answered. The results show the importance of including sweet and sour social capital in the explanation of status attainment on the labour market.