Social-Cognitive Proximity And Labor Mobility: An Examination Through The Fellowmen Ties

Labor mobility is one of the important topics gaining importance in recent years in the international literature. Although the fact that mobile labors usually find their new jobs through the social relations of which they are part is discussed with reference to concepts of the social and cognitive proximity, there is almost no study devoted to the identification of the methods of measurement of the respective distance. In this study, firstly it is assumed that fellowmen relationships can be used as a proxy variable in order to measure the social proximity, and then databases compiled for Siteler, an industrial cluster located in Ankara and specialized in furniture making, is analyzed by employing the tools of the social network analysis in order to examine the relationships between fellowmen relationships and labor mobility. This study revealing the melting-pot characteristics of the cities, on the one hand, shows how to monitor the respective melting-pot on the base of an indicator developed by employing social network analysis, on the other hand, unveals the fact that although fellowmen relationships can be taken as a measure of social proximity facilitating the identification of new jobs for the mobile labors, the respective function of the fellowmen relationships is decreasing in importance.