Immigrants and Their Host Polities:How Immigration Generates Change in the Host Societies and Polities

Abstract

Societies and communities with relevant number of immigrants are subjected in the long-term to deep structural re-organization processes which might provide for the re-distribution of power at both local and central levels, to a re-organization of existing elites and their influence and the emergence of new elites, as well as for the emergence of new order. Our approach has been inspired by the Brexit scenario as a key complexity context of how the issue of immigrants has been involved in the political party competition in UK. The history of the rise and decay of the UKIP party (Allchorn and Evans, 2018; Evans, Gould and Norman, 2019) for almost two decades since 1993 when it has been founded (Hunt, 2014), has been therefore considered as a typical scenario for the emergence of relevant changes in the UK society and polity as a host for immigrants. UK model of immigrant integration has been considered for decades as the best amongst the integration models in several other countries of Europe like France, Germany and Netherlands which are immigration target countries. Nonetheless, UK has shocked the world when a majority of the British people voted Brexit and revealed deep concerns with immigration. Our approach is aimed at modelling the changes induced by the immigration issues when involved in elections and party competition as a means to reveal the role played by the immigration in the emergence of complex changes in the host polity. Such complex changes emerge as a long-term side-effect of political power (re)distribution in a host society and polity and reveal the dimensions of society and polity structural change and re-organization processes because of political party competition, elections, political power distribution in the Government and political elites' dynamics. The Artificial Polity Model is employed in the simulation of the political organizations facing deep structural changes. Simulation modelling has been based on the case studies of UKIP history and Brexit.