Getting children from the Muslim community to go to university, core topic to improve integration and coexistence.

One of the keys for the integration of the Muslim community in the Spanish society and for coexistence "is that the children who belong to it continue in the system educational until university". This is the opinion of Ángeles Vicente, professor at the University of Zaragoza, who gave a lecture at lecture in the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra on the case of Ceuta.

He assures that in this city there are Muslim inhabitants who have become lawyers, teachers, journalists... "They participate actively in the public life of Ceuta and this has a positive effect on their community and their relationship with other citizens", he says. 

During his lecture, organized by the project MYOUROPE of the ICS, he addressed the consideration of people of Arab origin: "We cannot call immigrants to families that have been in this country for two or three generations. There are children with grandparents born in Spanish territory, who are in school and speak Spanish. They are as native as others". He recalled that in Ceuta, for example, there is a presence of Arab women and men "since the middle of the 19th century".

This community, he points out, has grown on issue in recent decades and is now almost as numerous as the population of Christian culture. "Over time," he notes, "its members have tried to build their identity and have done so by claiming their religion, Islam, and their mother language , Darija, which has been revitalized.

Ceutan Arabic language claim

Professor Vicente believes that the language financial aid builds bridges and therefore recommends that in places with a large Muslim population, such as Ceuta, social agents -police, health workers, teachers...- should be able to express themselves in vernacular Arabic. "I am thinking especially of the children. They often hear negative things about Darija and, although they are proud to speak it, they undervalue it," he says. For them, she says, "it's important to grow up with their culture revalued and to know that other people are interested in learning it."

Ángeles Vicente is an expert in Arabic and Islamic programs of study at the University of Zaragoza and author of the book Ceuta: a city between two languages. Her research has focused on topics such as the trace of Andalusian Arabic in northern Morocco or the interaction of Moroccan Arabic and Spanish in the city of Ceuta. He is also a corresponding member of the high school of programs of study Ceutíes.

His discussion paper was part of the seminar series 'Jalia: Arab immigrants in Europe' of the ICS's project MYOUROPE. This research seeks to understand in depth the discourses of people of Arab descent settled in the Old Continent, in the context of the discourses of mass migrations to the European Union.