a b s t r a c tUsing a representative national sample of personal networks, this article explores how the spatial dispersion of networks, residential mobility and social support are linked. Three issues will be addressed here. Firstly, how is the spatial dispersion of personal networks related to individuals' social characteristics, network composition and residential mobility? Secondly, how do the spatial dispersion of networks, residential mobility and their combined effect influence the number and (thirdly) the structure of emotional support ties? Results showed that the extent of the support was affected neither by the geographical distribution of the networks nor by residential mobility. Living far from one's birthplace, however, exerted two distinct, and opposite effects on the support network structure. On the one hand, mobility led to high spatial dispersion of personal contacts, which in turn favored a sparsely knit network centered around the mobile individual. On the other hand, by controlling for the effect of distance between the contacts, we found that individuals that cited long-distance ties tended to be part of more transitive support networks than those that cited local ties. We interpreted the latter effect as evidence that transitive ties may survive greater spatial distances than intransitive ones. These findings are discussed in view of spatial mobility and social network research.

After divorce, shorter distances between parents' homes are often seen as facilitating nonresident fathers' involvement, good coparenting practices and children's well-being. However, empirical evidence is scarce and the direction of causality remains unclear, as uninvolved fathers due to paternal disinterest, maternal gatekeeping or interparental conflict are more likely to move farther away from their children. Based on a probability sample of 144 divorced mothers of school-aged children living in Geneva, Switzerland, this study shows that both maternal promotion of the fatherchild relationship (cohesive coparenting) and fathers' residential proximity have positive and independent effects on children's emotional and behavioural outcomes. Although frequent fatherchild contacts by phone or emails can substitute for distance in coparenting, geographical proximity still matters for fathers' contribution to children's well-being. Overall, this study recommends that spatial and mobility dimensions should receive more attention in divorce research.

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Reference to teachers as agents of change has become commonplace in the education literature, including change toward more inclusive practice in response to the changing demographic of schooling. Yet, little is known about how teacher agency relates to (1) their understanding of, and commitment to any given change agenda and (2) the institutional and social structures through which they are able to access knowledge and resources within and beyond their schools. This study combined social and epistemic network analysis to examine teachers’ understanding of change and their sense of agency as they use their social networks to mobilise support for furthering change that matters to them. Our study is the first to apply this learning analytic approach in a real setting context. We used theories of teacher agency and inclusive pedagogy to interpret teachers’ social interactions in light of the extent to which they seek to make a difference toward greater inclusion. We collected data with an online log completed by teachers and other staff in two schools in Sweden over 6 months. The findings suggest that teachers understanding of change is embedded in their day-to-day activities such as student support, lesson planning, improvement of programs, and working conditions. Teachers tend to exercise agency toward inclusion when they seek to support student learning and well-being. When teachers act as agents of change, their social networks are bigger, more diverse and more collaborative than in situations in which they act as role implementers. We discuss substantive and methodological implications of these findings.

There are concerns that migrants may be embedded in far-flung networks with support being less collective. The spatial dispersion of their relatives and friends would result in fragmented networks with lower solidarity and lower mutual trust than densely connected networks based on geographical proximity. This may be particularly true for migrants who rarely meet their relatives and friends face-to-face. Yet, it is unclear what role, if any, distant visits play in migrants' social capital. This article examines these issues using representative data from Switzerland and a combination of network and sequence analysis. Results show that migrants have more spatially dispersed networks, which, in turn, are associated with higher number of emotional support ties compared to respondents with spatially close networks, yet they are characterised by low cohesion and low trust. Distant visits only partly moderate the influence of spatial dispersion on social capital. People who frequently visit or host their far-flung relatives and friends have more transitive networks and fewer supportive ties than those who see them less often, but they do not have higher trust in them. Overall, distant visits have relatively little impact on social capital, suggesting a network effect that goes beyond dyadic relationships.

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This article stresses the critical role of family inclusiveness for shaping the spatiality of families. Some individuals have a rather exclusive definition of their family, focusing on partner, children, siblings and parents. Others develop inclusive definitions of family by considering extended kin, step relatives and friends as significant family members. Family inclusiveness is hypothesized to account for a large share of the dispersion of family members throughout space. Data consisted of a stratified sample of 300 mothers of school-aged children living in the cosmopolitan city of Geneva. The results show that spatial dispersion of families increases with the number of family members considered significant. Inclusion of family members beyond the nuclear family of origin is paradoxically associated with a localised family context. Overall, this study emphasises the importance of family inclusiveness as a key dimension for understanding family spatiality in globalized societies.