Spatial eviction in attraction-Repulsion opinion dynamics: From polarized enclaves to moderate consensus

Exclusionary social processes—from neighborhood ostracism to online deplatforming—can reshape collective opinion, yet existing models of opinion polarization rarely incorporate the forced relocation of dissenters. We address this gap with an agent-based model that couples Attraction–Repulsion opinion dynamics with a spatial eviction mechanism on a two-dimensional lattice. Agents interact with nearby neighbors: like-minded pairs converge, while those exceeding a tolerance threshold repel each other and may expel the most dissimilar neighbor to a distant location. Across the parameter space of eviction frequency and tolerance, three dynamical phases emerge. Without eviction, mutual repulsion drives the population into two opposing ideological camps—yet, counterintuitively, these camps remain spatially intermixed. At high eviction rates, constant reshuffling of dissenters prevents extremist clusters from forming and drives the population toward moderate consensus. Between these extremes lies a fragile pluralistic regime in which moderate and extreme subpopulations coexist but are easily destabilized by stochastic perturbations. The central, policy-relevant insight is that exclusion plays a dual, frequency-dependent role: infrequent eviction entrenches polarization by creating homogeneous enclaves, whereas frequent eviction dissolves them. These findings provide a mechanistic framework for understanding how the rate—not merely the presence—of exclusionary processes shapes the trajectory from polarization to consensus.