6 March 2017. The touring exhibition displays 15 large-format portraits of migrants from the St.Gallen region. With both images and text, the panels reveal the experience, skills and potential the people portrayed have brought along from their homeland, and they compare the migrants’ social status in their homeland with their social status in their new home.

Help shape society

The exhibition explores the question as to how migrants help shape local society, what potentials are in demand and useful here and what potentials they had to leave behind in their homeland. Not least, the display cuts right to the core of current issues and the challenges of social and integration policy.

When people talk about migration and potentials, the public debate usually focuses on work integration and economic benefit. It is soon ignored that migrants could also use their skills to help shape our society and make it worth living in. The exhibition "Must integration be useful?" intends to highlight these skills and explores the question as how migrants can bring their potentials to bear and where this involvement finds recognition.

Exhibition dates

30 January to 10 February 2017, 1st floor, St.Gallen City Hall

13 March to 30 March 2017, University of St.Gallen, entrance to the main restaurant (Mensa)

18 April to 28 April 2017, St.Gallen University of Applied Sciences

2 May to 20 May 2017, St.Gallen City Library

31 May to 21 June 2017, St.Fiden Parish Hall

The exhibition is run jointly by the municipal and regional integration offices, the school for women with foreign languages (Aida), the Libra Forum of the City Library, the Solidaritätshaus St.Gallen and the HEKS Eastern Switzerland Regional Office.