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Pre-arrival integration tests used by European countries suggest discriminatory measures subtly persist in immigration laws. This paper draws on a comparison across the Americas and Europe to identify and explain historical continuities and discontinuities in ‘assimilability’ admissions requirements. We attribute legal shifts at the turn of the twenty-first century to the institutionalised delegitimisation of biological racism and the rise of permanent settlement immigration to Europe. Efforts to reduce Muslim immigration largely motivate contemporary European policies, but these policies test putative individual capacity to integrate rather than inferring it from a racial group categorisation, as did historical precedents in the Americas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ( DACA) program provides temporary relief from deportation and legal work authorization for eligible undocumented youth in the United States. This study investigates the factors that help or hinder undocumented youth in applying for DACA. We focus on contexts of reception to understand the determinants of DACA applications, as studies of previous legalization programs indicate that the communities in which immigrants live help shape application decisions. Our analysis shows that more immigrant-serving organizations in a state translate into more applications, that DACA implementation rates are not statistically significantly lower in states with hostile policy climates, and that socioeconomic factors are most significantly related to DACA applications. In identifying the collective factors that influence applying to DACA, we demonstrate that the structural opportunities and barriers present in receiving locales shape undocumented youths' decisions to regularize their immigration status, which has significant implications for their resulting incorporation trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]