Nicolas Brunetti

Inshallah is a photographic project developed between 2023 and 2025 that explores the personal and collective stories of the younger generations of Ceuta, a Spanish enclave located on Moroccan territory. Through a suspended visual narrative, Nicolas Brunetti portrays places and individuals as if immersed in a limbo – both mental and physical – marked by the uncertainty and precariousness that shape their lives. A European possession since 1415, Ceuta is separated from Morocco by the so-called Ceuta border fence, an artificial barrier that winds across the hills until it reaches the sea.

In 2025, the city recorded one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe, second only to Melilla, the other Spanish enclave on the African continent. Long a border space, Ceuta makes evident what anthropologist Nicholas De Genova argues in The Borders of Europe: it is borders that produce the very condition of the “migrant”; in their absence, there would be only movement. Borders, in fact, operate as political devices that define belonging and otherness.
The title, Inshallah – an Arabic expression meaning “God willing” – introduces a dimension of waiting and hope. In this context, the project becomes an attempt to counter discrimination and prejudice, contributing to the construction of a shared sense of belonging. Brunetti thus documents the expectations, desires, and aspirations of young Muslims living in the city’s peripheral neighborhoods.