Inshallah

Inshallah is an Arabic word often used by Muslims, meaning 'If God wills'. It manifests the hope of a believer that an event may happen, the dream of seeing one's goal realised. Project speaks about dreams and hopes of youngsters living in a Ceuta barrio.

Ceuta is the city with the highest unemployment rate in Europe, where the percentage is around 30%. Out of around 83,000 people, roughly 29,000 are employed. Of these, more than a third work in the public sector. The few private companies have closed or are closing, factories can be counted on the fingers of one hand, the port cannot rival those in Morocco, and tourism is limited. About 25% of the economy depended on Moroccan border crossers, who bought goods in Ceuta and then resold them in Morocco. Since the closure of the border following the Covid pandemic in 2020 and the final closure after the illegal entry of some 10,000 Moroccans in 2021, this market has shut down completely. Ceuta is an autonomous city, a Spanish exclave in Morocco, a free port and the only territory in Europe along with Melilla that shares a land border with Africa.

Positioned on a hill just a stone's throw from the Moroccan border and made up of colourful houses reminiscent of Brazilian favelas, we find the Principe Alfonso barrio, better known as 'Príncipe' and described by the Spanish and international press as one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods in Europe. The barrio has a complex history and a very problematic present: in the last twenty years it has gone from wars between drug traffickers to a phase of Islamic radicalisation and links with jihadism. Today's problem is youth crime, less organised but just as dangerous: there are shootings almost every week. The causes are unemployment, dropping out of school, poor state presence and lack of prospects. A dialect that mixes Arabic and Spanish is spoken, the residents all know each other, those who do not live there and pass by are immediately noticed. The population of the neighbourhood is growing, the average age is lower and lower, but the prospects for those born here are limited. There is one primary school in the barrio, secondary schools are five kilometres away. The drop-out rate before the end of compulsory schooling is around 24% in Ceuta, but within Príncipe it is over 56%. Young people in Príncipe cannot find work because they are considered dangerous, unskilled and often cannot even access benefits, because 'abusive' housing units abound in structures that are considered unitary, even when they consist of several flats. All it takes is a father or a sibling with an income to blow up the rankings: the family unit is considered the same.