Inshallah is an Arabic word that means “if God wills it”. It expresses a believer’s faith in relation to an event that may occur in the future. The photographic project tells of the expectations, desires, and dreams of some young residents of the Principe Alfonso neighbourhood in Ceuta (Spain), a border city with the highest unemployment rate in Europe, approximately 30%. Youth crime in the neighbourhood represents a deep wound, determined by different factors such as social exclusion, unemployment, school dropout rates, and lack of institutions. The project’s aim is to reveal the state of uncertainty and precariousness in which the young people of the barrio find themselves, from a perspective in which they are protagonists, aware of their condition and able to interpret their destinies, creating margins of freedom of thought and action. These are intimate and personal stories that manifest the point of view of a community: Moroccan youths with Spanish passports, European citizens on the African continent, Muslims confronted with other cultures and religions. The images depict the degree of suspension in their lives, stretched between the internal scenario of the neighbourhood and the external one, between the tendency towards crime and the need for redemption, the social decay and the desire to continue studying to improve their surroundings. Some shots represent landmarks of the landscape: the natural ones, like the mountain group of the “Mujer Muerta”, or artificial ones, like the “Valla”, fence that separates Spain from Morocco and hinders the illegal transit of migrants. Inshallah is above all a message of hope that remains in suspension, but it’s repeated with strength by each of the young people portrayed.
