Confessions of a social scientist My meanderings in the world of ABM

About me (Quantitative) Sociologist – Some experience with programming Main research interests: – Immigrant adaptation in a comparative perspective – Ethnic inequalities in education and the labour market – Social stratification and mobility

My relationship with ABM Prior relationship with ABM? – Very brief Currently a research associate on the ‘Social Complexity of Immigration and Diversity’ (SCID) project at the Institute for Social Change One of (many) roles in the project: – Help build rules of behaviour (agents, households, etc.) for a complex agent-based model of voting behaviour Embedded in existing literature and data

Micro-level: the individual Micro-level: relational processes Intention to vote Voting Exogenous factors Meso-level: Networks and overlapping groups Household Social Activity Discussion Socialisation Mobilisation Habit ‘Rational choice’ Learning Demographic characteristics Ethnicity, Age, Immigration status, Class Population dynamics Interest & knowledge Civic duty

Lessons learned (I) It is hard to wrap your head around the ABM way of thinking – Process of coding/labelling Can be strenuous (it’s hard for everyone!) – How to set out rules of behaviour There is a lot out there to make sense of! – How to approach an ABM problem Global idea of what want to achieve (but might not be able to!) – What can be achieved with ABM And what cannot (prediction is hard!) – Speaking the same language as the programmers Not always a smooth process (but very helpful) – The sheer length of the process! Especially when it comes to debugging/validating (and arguing)!

Lessons learned (II) It is even harder to wrap other people’s heads around ABM – Focus away from traditional views (from quant side) Coefficients and prediction – Perception that you are claiming that you can explain everything – Someone will always have some element to add to your model! It has shifted the way in which I perceive social science – (Lack of) focus on mechanisms – More focus on the sheer complexity of human behaviour and phenomena And how little we know about it! – Critical overview of existing theory and data sources But all in all it is a pretty useful tool of social enquiry

Impact on my own research Having a go at my own ‘simple’ model – Test ideas present within the immigration literature, mainly: Dynamics process of migration (including feedback mechanisms, network and herd effects) – Massey, Rogers, de Haas, Epstein Impact of selectivity at sending and receiving country level – Lee, Borjas, Feliciano Role of policy regimes – Castles and Miller, Koopmans

The model C Family D #%#% #%#% #%#% General High skilled A Low skilledNo selection BE

QUESTIONS? COMMENTS?