The importance of social capital to East Asian youth in the past two decades has been underscored by complex and shifting educational and vocational trends. Traditional pathways from school to work, entrenched in existing institutional relationships between schools and corporations, are not longer as easily pursued as a result of precarious forces exerted by capitalist pursuits. Specifically marginalized East Asian youth such as Japanese freeters, South Korean entrepreneurs and college students, and Chinese migrant laborers are amongst forced to leverage their social capital differently as a result of their risky situations (Driscoll 2007; Song 2007; Hansen 2012). Although many similarities exist between students who choose to enter established paths by leveraging institutional connections and those who pursue passions through individual desires and relationships, utilization of different forms of social capital is not a prima facie example of liberating and youthful choice but rather the consequences of exploitative movements targeting marginalized youth and workers.
Social capital refers to the networks and associations that link an individual to family, friends, acquaintances, and co-workers, amongst others. The distinction between institutional and individual social capital arises from the origin of specific networks, typically linked with school or work and personal domains, respectively (Brinton 2000). Students utilize each with different proclivities based on both institutional resources and individual motivations.
Students at top-tier or elite institutions (at both high schools and universities) typically exploit institutional social capital in their search for corporate employment. These students leverage the name brand or “brand capital” of their school to obtain employment at corporations that routinely hire only from specific schools. However, although their reliance on institutional capital may dominate the majority of their opportunities and relationships, students have their social networks defined by a mixture of both institutional and individual social capital.
However, for marginalized workers, the ability to choose between leveraging institutional versus individual social capital is often nonexistent. Nancy Abelmann qualifies “escalating structural inequality in South Korea” as the predominant factor behind neo-liberal subjectivities, rooted as one of the main causes of precarity in youth (Abelmann 2009). Although these subjectivities are borne differently, South Korean college students have demonstrated a modeled image of self-improvement to shape and survive in a competitive globalized marketplace.

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