  Successfully integrating newcomers into native communities has become a key
issue for policy makers, as the growing number of migrants has brought cultural
diversity, new skills, and at times, societal tensions to receiving countries.
We develop an agent-based network model to study interacting "hosts" and
"guests" and identify the conditions under which cooperative/integrated or
uncooperative/segregated societies arise. Players are assumed to seek
socioeconomic prosperity through game theoretic rules that shift network links,
and cultural acceptance through opinion dynamics. We find that the main
predictor of integration under given initial conditions is the timescale
associated with cultural adjustment relative to social link remodeling, for
both guests and hosts. Fast cultural adjustment results in cooperation and the
establishment of host-guest connections that are sustained over long times.
Conversely, fast social link remodeling leads to the irreversible formation of
isolated enclaves, as migrants and natives optimize their socioeconomic gains
through in-group connections. We discuss how migrant population sizes and
increasing socioeconomic rewards for host-guest interactions, through
governmental incentives or by admitting migrants with highly desirable skills,
may affect the overall immigrant experience.
