A Physical Perspective to Human Migration Phenomenon

TL;DR

This paper introduces a physics-inspired model for human migration based on wealth distribution gradients, using natural phenomena analogies to predict migration flows and wealth disparities worldwide.

Contribution

It presents a novel mathematical framework linking wealth distribution and migration flow inspired by heat transfer models, incorporating multiple societal factors and machine learning for parameter estimation.

Findings

The model can predict wealth distribution across countries.

It explains how wealth disparities influence legal and illegal migration.

Critical events increase wealth inequality and migration flows.

Abstract

This paper presents a physical perspective on the human migration phenomenon claiming that human social behaviors are somehow but not completely inspired by nature. Human displacement or migration in the world is highly affected by equivalent weighted wealth and multidimensional poverty distribution across countries. In this work, it has been shown that the equivalent weighted wealth as an important characteristic of a society can be introduced in a mathematical language in terms of a country gross productivity factor, safety and social factors, environmental and economic factors, political and healthy factors, educational and cultural factors and so on using some weights, where these weights can be determined using regression or machine learning techniques. By inspiring from the natural phenomena such as heat conduction models; heat conduction and heat convection models, a constitutive model for migration flow rate in terms of the equivalent weighted wealth gradient descent has been given where accompanying with other balance laws it can make possible to determine wealth distribution and migration flow rate across the world. Some critical conditions such as earthquakes, war, famine, insecurity, and more prevent the natural transmission of wealth and lead to the intensification of non-uniformity in wealth distribution. The increase in the equivalent weighted wealth difference between countries leads to an enhanced legal migration rate as well as a boosted illegal migration flow rate where it exceeds a threshold value. The introduced nature-inspired model could significantly predict wealth distribution as well as migration rate, which will have helped those who try to have a world with a logical almost uniform equivalent weighted wealth distribution and will have made the world a better place for all of the people.