Research Projects
The Social Complexity of Immigration and Diversity (SCID)
Funder: The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
Principal Investigator: Ed Fieldhouse, Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester
Co-Investigators:
Nick Crossley, Sociology, University of Manchester
Bruce Edmonds, Manchester Metropolitan University
Yaojun Li, Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester
Alan McKane, Physics, University of Manchester
Nick Shryane, Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester
Dates: September 2010 – August 2015
The Social Complexity of Immigration and Diversity, (SCID) is a new project from The Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester, The Theoretical Physics Group, University of Manchester, and Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan University, supported by the EPSRC.
SCID is a five-year research programme that will develop and apply novel tools and techniques from complexity science to model and understand the social processes relating to ethnic diversity and immigration.
Ours has been dubbed the 'age of migration'. Immigration is a major political issue, with increasing media coverage, rising anti-immigration sentiment and the rise of anti-immigration political parties. The issue of migration sits centrally within the wider debate about ethnic and religious diversity and its effects on social cohesion. We are still, though, a long way from understanding these issues and their potential consequences. They seem to rest on beliefs about national identity and ethnicity, but cannot be divorced from the effects of social class, education, economic competition and inequality, as well as the influences of geographical and social segregation, social structures and institutions. This project will integrate two very different disciplines, social science and complexity science, in order to gain new understanding of these interdependent social issues. It will do this by building a series of analytical and agent-based simulation models of these social processes.
For more information please visit the project website, along with information about SCID partners here and a SCID summary here.