Relocation without preference: A destination-agnostic Schelling-type metapopulation model

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new Schelling-type metapopulation model analyzing how random, destination-agnostic relocations can lead to segregation, with insights derived from mean-field limits and long-term behavior.

Contribution

It presents a novel, destination-agnostic model of segregation, deriving mean-field ODEs and analyzing the emergence of segregation patterns under different regimes.

Findings

Segregation can emerge even without destination preference.

Mean-field models reveal parameter regimes leading to segregation.

Long-term behavior shows rich interplay between social structure and parameters.

Abstract

In this work, we propose and analyze a novel Schelling-type metapopulation model that examines how random relocations of families between neighborhoods can lead to segregation. The model consists of a large number of houses organized into $N$ neighborhoods with $L$ houses each, without any spatial structure. Houses can be occupied by either a blue or a red family, and families relocate -- to an empty house selected uniformly at random -- at a rate that depends only on the number of families of the other type within the same neighborhood. We study two mean-field regimes: the large $N$ limit with fixed $L$, and the large $L$ limit with fixed $N$. The associated mean-field systems of ODEs are derived, and their long-time behavior is investigated. As is often the case with Schelling-type models, we find a rich interplay between the model parameters and the social structure of the equilibrium distribution, which exhibits segregation in some parameter ranges. Our work demonstrates that segregation patterns can emerge even when the relocation mechanism is destination-agnostic.