Haraga Dreams

Danish Photographer Christian Als narrates his experience of photographing an Algerian young man while participating in DEDI’s Arab Newspaper Development Program in 2010.

Als writes:

In a country full of oil and gas revenues, so little of that money is being used to create jobs and help the country’s poor. In Algeria, youth unemployment is high, with an estimated 30% of young people between 19 and 30 jobless. People under the age of 30 account for 70% of the unemployed, and the likelihood of being unemployed increases with education. This leads to youth taking drugs, drinking and in general wanting to leave Algeria for good. A whole generation in despair.

All along the Maghreb coast of North Africa millions of young men are waiting for a chance to make the great leap to the southern coastline of Europe. Maybe as blind passengers in a truck or freight container, maybe in the cargo hold of a ship sailing north from one of the Moroccan or Algerian ports, or maybe on a wild journey in a small motorboat offered by cynical human traffickers. They are dreaming of a better life in the promised land – a romantic and often unrealistic dream in the light of the difficulties meeting them.

In Europe they are often seen as one of the most scaring signs of illegal immigration – and therefore also a symbol much used by the xenophobic forces attaining support from the popular anxiety of being overflowed by poor Arabs.

In their Arab homelands this large group of young men are disapproved too. In Algeria these “Haragas”, (potential emigrants), living on the streets waiting for the opportunity to flee, are seen as men giving up on their country and as discomforting symbols of the difficulties and lack of hope to change standards of living from within.

I wanted to meet some of these Haragas – and they were not difficult to find in the streets of Algiers and in the back alleys around the Kasbah (the old Arab districts) in the hills rolling down to the great port of the city. Here I met young men living on the fringes of society with rusty hopes, boredom and lack of self-confidence.