United We Stand? Simulating Acculturation Processes in a Migration Context Using MigrAgent

Abstract

Since 2015 Europe is facing a serious refugee crisis, with more than 1,000,000 migrants who have already crossed its borders. Most of them are expected to settle in Europe, which will undoubtedly affect its social fabric, with the risk of emerging conflicts between host and migrants and polarization within the host society. In this paper we introduce our agent-based model MigrAgent which aims at exploring the emergence of acculturation strategies from the within and between interactions of a host and a migrant population through time. We hope that our model can contribute to shed light on the topic of reciprocal acculturation and the opinion polarization often associated with it.

Keywords: Acculturation Strategies, Opinion Polarization, Migration Flows, Cultural Dynamics

JEL Classification: C31, C63