ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the exigencies, content and operational processes of the social networks that were central to comprehending the builders’ lives, cultures and the broader organization of the construction marketplace. I demonstrate how community networks intersected with economic processes, not only in terms of uncovering employment opportunities and ordering work organization but, in combination with the builders’ expenditure of physical ‘body capital’, they also provided the acquisition of various other services and goods. The social network and body capital utilized to obtain these opportunities, however, facilitated the development of barriers that stratified and structured broader social opportunity. This was particularly salient for recent migrant groups whose social and symbolic capital held small value in broader society as a result of stigmatizing racism and the groups’ immersion in the ‘strong ties’ characteristic of ethnic community networks. Social networking was also employed by more advantageous contractor and subcontractor groups to maintain their social and economic position, whereby they, parallel to the actions of their employees described in Chapters 1 and 3, worked to close down the construction market by re-embedding it in informal social content through the creation of business cliques. These practices had a tendency to transgress into illegitimate realms that further blocked the infusion of formal law into the building contract market, and which also impeded the opportunities and labour power of those possessing lower value forms of social capital – particularly recent migrant groups. The combination of these factors reveals the construction marketplace as quite divergent from dominant notions of capitalist market processes.
