Debye-H\"{u}ckel Theory for Refugees' Migration

Sara Najem

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arXiv · 1711.05052

Debye-H\"{u}ckel Theory for Refugees' Migration

Sara Najem

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Abstract

In this Letter we follow the short-ranged Syrian refugees' migration to Lebanon as documented by the UNHCR. We propose a model inspired by the Debye-H\"{u}ckel theory and show that it properly predicts the refugees' mobility while the gravity model fails. We claim that the interaction between origin cities attenuates and/or extenuates the flux to destinations, and consequently, in analogy with the effective charges of interacting particles in a plasma, these source cities are characterized by effective populations determined by their pairwise remoteness/closeness and defined by areas of control between the fighting parties.

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Sara Najem. 2017-11-14. Debye-H\"{u}ckel Theory for Refugees' Migration. https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.05052

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