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Paper short abstract

Based on fieldwork across Papua, Timor, and West Borneo, this paper examines how social capital is generated, fragmented, and mobilised in conflict-affected and marginal contexts, shaping resilience through kinship, volunteerism, and digital networks.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the role of social capital in shaping resilience in fragile and conflict-affected contexts, drawing on multi-sited qualitative fieldwork conducted between February and December 2025 in Timor, East Nusa Tenggara, the Papua Highlands and Lowlands, West Borneo (Singkawang), and Jakarta. The study is based on 166 interviews (94 female, 72 male), participatory video workshops, and extended participant observation among Indigenous Papuans, East Timorese ex-refugees, Chinese Indonesians, and multiethnic local officials and volunteers.

The analysis maps diverse sources of social capital, including kinship and clan relations, ethnic and religious networks, volunteer associations, and informal digital infrastructures. In conflict-affected Papua, protracted insecurity and displacement fragment social ties, yet clan-based support networks remain crucial for coping. Among East Timorese ex-refugees in West Timor, persistent outsider status undermines access to institutional social capital, producing long-term precarity. In Singkawang, Chinese Indonesians face economic vulnerability that contradicts dominant stereotypes, while multiethnic volunteer networks generate bridging social capital that facilitates access to social protection and disaster response.

The paper identifies how different agents generate, harness, or undermine social capital, including frontline social workers, unpaid volunteers, and state institutions. It traces pathways through which social capital contributes to resilience, while also demonstrating how exclusion, stigma, and moral judgement can weaken long-term adaptive capacity.