Parallel society: Myth or reality? A question for policy makers

What is it about?

The Danish government has produced a public document to announce that deviations from societal values were tolerated no more. They denounced the presence of “alternative values” areas (called “parallel societies”), located mostly where low or no income residents live in social/public housing (officially called “ghetto areas” or ghettoområder). Through the means of agent-based computational simulation, this paper uses a nested “model in a model” approach to study the issue by introducing a policy-simulation-policy loop. The paper is a first attempt to explore whether programmatic policy indications have some actual reflection on the formation of these “alternative values” areas. Results suggest ways in which a sustainable governmental policy on ghetto areas shall not start from assuming divergence where there is none, showing the value of the technique developed for this paper.

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Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash