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Scholars have typically drawn a sharp distinction between immigration admissions policies and policies that regulate immigrants' integration into the society of the destination country (Hammar 1989). Yet by 2011, several European governments required many potential immigrants to demonstrate that they have the capacity to integrate before or shortly after entry. The supposed ability to integrate became a condition of admission through new policies that required national language tests, and in the Dutch and French cases, the demonstration of cultural knowledge about those countries as well. Many analysts have argued that combining integration and immigration policies in this fashion is a novel and uniquely European form of immigration control (Orgad 2010; Wallace Goodman 2011; Groenendijk 2011; Joppke 2013; Bonjour 2014). This paper draws on much deeper and broader comparisons across North America, Latin America, and Western Europe over the last century. We identify and explain what is new in the forms and logics of using assimilability as a formal criterion to select immigrants. A recurring characteristic throughout this period is that preferences for "assimilable" immigrants are used to avoid the international and domestic conflicts that accompany discrimination against named groups. A major difference in twenty-first century European policies is that while they are motivated by folk theories of which social groups are most and least assimilable, the ability to integrate is now tested as an individual cultural achievement, rather than an immutable, racially ascribed status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops and empirically tests a model of political participation for undocumented youth in the United States, focusing on nonvoting forms of political engagement. Using one of the first systematic, nationwide surveys of undocumented millennials, we show that a) undocumented youth express much higher levels of political agency and participation than the literature on the political incorporation of immigrants leads us to expect, and b) membership in organizations that work on immigration-related issues is a main determinant of this sense of agency. The literature on immigrant political incorporation is vast, but precedent studies too often focus on formal acts of political participation such as naturalization and voting. With an analytical focus on undocumented young people, this article contributes significantly to theoretical and empirical knowledge about how and why unauthorized immigrants become politically engaged despite the many obstacles that exist to their formal participation in politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars contend that contemporary liberal principals are irreconcilable with immigration and citizenship law that discriminates by race, ethnicity, and national origins. Positive selection, in which states grant privileged access and membership to immigrants who share the native majority's ethnicity, is more acceptable because of the underlying logic that co-ethnic newcomers readily integrate via their cultural capital. Drawing on the case of Aguaviva, Spain, home to both co-ethnic Argentines and to Romanians, I argue that the assumption behind the question of whether it is less reprehensible to prefer rather than to discriminate-that shared ethnicity facilitates incorporation-is faulty. Such similarity between immigrants and their hosts can counterintuitively limit labor market integration, the key to economic mobility, especially in destinations with other immigrant pools. Not similar enough to gain foothold into primary sector work reserved for natives, co-ethnics are also not different enough to secure entry into the secondary sector dominated by less desirable immigrants. Despite the preferential terms with which co-ethnics are welcomed into the receiving polity, this study demonstrates how and why ethnic similarity can problematically obstruct labor market integration. [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 U.S. The total number of applications submitted in the program's first year represents just 32.5 percent of the estimated population of DACA-eligible youth and approximately 60 percent of those estimated to be immediately eligible. This article investigates factors that help or hinder undocumented youth in applying to DACA, drawing on data from 465,509 applications obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests. We focus on contexts of reception to understand the determinants of DACA applications, as studies of previous legalization programs indicate that communities helped to shape application decisions. Our analysis shows that more immigrantserving organizations in a state translates 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 and their resulting incorporation trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]