Why is Migration Always a Test?
Task
To create a communication campaign that flips over narratives of migration and 'integration'.
On February, 2025, What Design Can Do challenged its audience to nothing less than redesign belonging. The Open Call was an invitation to rethink what belonging means in Europe. At Sharp & Sour, we fell in love with the idea and decided to give it a go. Our project, which became one of the 11 finalists, consisted of an awareness campaign on culture, privilege and belonging. Its name: Why Is Migration Always a Test?
‘Why Is Migration Always a Test?’ is a communication campaign that seeks to highlight the cultural knowledge gap between migrants and locals, and challenge assumptions about integration. The campaign draws inspiration from the citizenship test and, as suggested by one the participants of one of the WDCD workshops, reverses its questions.
The impact of this project lies in its ability to make people reflect, create dialogue and challenge existing colonial narratives. It fosters empathy, awareness, and a rethinking of integration policies, encouraging locals to see migration as a mutual exchange rather than a one-sided process.
In Spain, as in many European countries, migrants are expected to assimilate, generally through citizenship tests that measure extensive (and often rather arbitrary) cultural knowledge. By reversing the citizenship test, this project shifts the focus from migrants to the colonialist local mindset that demands their assimilation while ignoring their heritage.
The posters confront locals with cultural questions from the countries of Spain’s largest migrant communities (such as Morocco, Colombia, or Venezuela), exposing structural inequalities and double standards in the idea of belonging. Fostering inclusivity and intersectionality, we chose questions that show different realities (from different economic backgrounds to gender roles).
The campaign consists of posters featuring questions about the culture, traditions and relevant knowledge of their home countries. These countries have a significant migrant population in Spain, yet the local population barely knows about them and their culture. At the same time, migrants are forced to pass an extensive test about Spanish knowledge. This project challenges the concept of integration, which often serves as a euphemism for assimilation, and highlights the injustice of this one-sided adaptation.
Besides the questions and the illustrations, all of the posters include a QR code that citizens can scan with their phones. These QR codes direct them to the full test, where they are assessed on how well they know the cultures around them. After completing the test, each person will be aware of how much —or how little— they know the cultures they coexist with in their city. In addition, other materials such as recommendations or follow-up CTAs could be included at the end of the process.
The naturalisation exams —as well as the whole concept of integration— are particularly unfair for migrant women, as they often face additional barriers such as limited access to formal education, unpaid caregiving responsibilities that take away time to study, on top of systemic biases that make it harder for them to meet ‘integration’ requirements. That is why, in our proposal, we wanted to put the focus on them. However, racism has no gender, and the full project could be adapted accordingly if needed.
