Can you become one of us? A historical comparison of legal selection of ‘assimilable’ immigrants in Europe and the Americas

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Integration
• assimilation
• immigration
• Islamophobia
• racism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Personal communication with Birgitte Borker Alberg from the ‘Spousal Office’ or Ægtefællekontoret, December 9, 2014.

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MIjXf5UzpI. Generally, dogs are negatively regarded in Muslim societies.

3. http://en.inburgeren.nl/footer/Regel-het-met-DUO.jsp#mijn-inburgering (accessed December 8, 2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [grant number 0819506].