‘Too dumb to be Dutch’: learning ability test in Dutch civic integration programme

This study presents an in-depth analysis of the Learning Ability Test (LAT), a new testing tool used in Dutch civic integration. Drawing from theoretical perspectives rooted in Science and Technology Studies, testing studies, and critical migration and integration studies, we conceptualise the test as a sociotechnical actor in the ‘ordering’ processes of contemporary jus linguarum citizenship, where membership is increasingly tied to demonstrable language proficiency. Analysing government documents and interviews with test developers, administrators and test-takers, we reconstruct how the LAT was designed, contested and ultimately stabilised as an ‘objective’, evidence-based tool through various technologies of legitimacy. We show that the LAT does far more than assess linguistic potential. Applied at the start of the integration trajectory, it sorts subjects into differentiated learning routes and citizenship horizons, functioning as an internal raciolinguistic border that silently ranks their worth and presumed capacity for ‘self-reliance’. The analysis highlights how the test’s thresholds, categories and discretionary space translate political and moral judgements into the language of measurement, obscuring the racialised and discriminatory work they perform. We conclude that this ostensibly neutral classification tool not only reproduces but also deepens hierarchies of desirable and undesirable citizens, with significant consequences for access to naturalisation and full membership.