Agent-based modelling of population dynamics of two interacting social communities: migrants and natives

This article presents a new agent-based approach to modeling migration and demographic processes based on computer simulation of the population dynamics of two interacting communities: migrants and native people implementing different decision-making strategies. The approach proposed in the article is based on the well-known model of interaction between ‘nomads’ and ‘plowmen’ and focused on studying the behavior of societies with more complex behavior patterns than in the original model: native people and migrants, as well as their impact on social and economic and environmental systems. Moreover, members of both communities (societies), i.e. agent-migrants (that can be considered as ‘nomads’) and agent–native people (that can be considered as ‘plowmen’) reproduce the resources (job places) necessary to increase personal welfare and realize the opportunities for marriage and childbirth. Agent-migrants create resources with the lowest level of return, such as ‘low-technological job places’ and agent–native people reproduce ‘high-technological job places’ that provide a greater contribution to the level of personal welfare and economic growth in a common. The total number of such job placements is restricted by the spatial and demographic characteristics of the system. The suggested model takes into account the influence of many parameters, in particular, the life expectancy, the share of new migrants in previously immigrants, minimum levels of personal welfare and other important characteristics that reflect the behavior of members of the studied communities. At the same time, the effect of such parameters on migration and demographic processes, and the macroeconomic and environmental characteristics associated with them are studied.