What are friends for? Elective communities of single people

The paper presents the results of a qualitative research on friendship networks of single people. The research has been undertaken using social network analysis tools (egonetworks) and qualitative interviews, on a non-representative sample of 23 heterosexual singles of Milan, aged between 25 and 35 years, 12 male and 11 female. Framed within the theory of community, we formulated some questions that are addressed through the analysis: the role of friendship in single people’s everyday life, which in some cases substitutes the traditional family as a source of emotional, social, material and economical support; the possibility that friendship is not always intended as a source of support, and people can name friends even if they do not provide any kind of support; the effect of the network structure on the strength of dyads, that will easily disconnect if not embedded in a cohesive network. Four different kinds of friendship networks have been found: the small cliques, the company, the core/periphery structure, and the contextualised components. In the discussion section, empirical findings are analysed focusing on different strategies of friendship, and special attention is given to the gender