Relevance of social capital in the face of unemployment in university students generated by the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Based on the acknowledgment that the ability in Colombia to use and generate social capital is quite deficient at the national level according to official measurements carried out in the country, the central theme of this article focuses on analyzing whether social capital is relevant to the phenomenon of unemployment in middle and low income university students generated by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study deals with a sample of 392 students of the Universidad ECCI in Bogota, mainly middle and low income, who from the completion of a semi-structured survey designed with four dimensions at social, emotional, economic, and associativity levels, show that the use of formal and informal networks in young people has some level of impact on job placement in a discreet way, due to the low capacity of recognition of network linkage, as well as the complexity of access to networks that potentiate solidarity and support in times of juncture such as the one we are living, ignoring the potential impact of social capital on development.