Rapid migrations and dynamics of citizen response

Abstract

One of the pressing social concerns of our time is the need for meaningful responses to migrants and refugees fleeing conflict and environmental catastrophe. We develop a computational model to model the influx of migrants into a city, varying the rates of entry, and find a nonlinear inverse relationship between the fraction of resident population whose tolerance levels are breached due to migrant entry and the average time to such tolerance breach. Essentially, beyond a certain rate of migrant entry, there is a rapid rise in the fraction of residents whose tolerances are breached, even as the average time to breach decreases. We also model an analytical approximation of the computational model and find qualitative correspondence in the observed phenomenology, with caveats. The sharp increase in the fraction of residents with tolerance breach could potentially underpin the intensity of resident responses to bursts of migrant entry into their cities. Given this nonlinear relationship, it is perhaps essential that responses to refugee situations are multi-country or global efforts so that sharp spikes of refugee migrations are equitably distributed among nations, potentially enabling all participating countries to avoid impacting resident tolerances beyond limits that are socially sustainable.