The problem of integrating non-Western immigrants into Western welfare states is the focus of this paper. To address this issue, we suggest a social capital approach in which we apply the conceptual pair of bridging social capital (BR), which connects an individual to the broader social structure, and bonding social capital (BO), which closely binds an individual to his or her narrow social group. By this we hope to grasp both the sunny and the more shadowy side of network cooperation and trust in relation to the integration of immigrants. Our data, on non-Western immigrants in Denmark, show a positive relationship between the levels of bridging and bonding capital, suggesting that bonding social capital in the immigrant group does not seem to impede the establishment of the bridging social capital needed for integration.

Do institutions or culture determine levels of social trust in society? If quality of institutions determines levels of social trust, migrants from countries with lower-quality institutions should enhance their level of social trust in countries with higher-quality institutions. If, on the other hand, the migrants' level of social trust is determined by their culture, it should not be affected by a different institutional setting. Furthermore, culturally diverse immigrant groups should have different levels of social trust in the same host country. Analysing migration from several non-western countries to Denmark, this paper demonstrates that institutions rather than culture matter for social trust.