In 1970, the Census The population surprised Portugal: just 8.6 million residents, less than expected. The surprise was, after all, obvious – the country was emptying itself. That year, at least, more than 180 thousand Portuguese left Portugal. They fled poverty, the Colonial War, the regime. Emigration was, in the view of the time, a sign of delay, it seemed to assume impressive numbers and define the identity of the country, what went and what stayed.
Fifty years later, in 2020, the United Nations estimated that there are around 2.1 million people born in Portugal living abroad – approximately 21% of the resident population. In 1970, this proportion was about 9 to 10%. The country became rich, integrated into the European space, democratized, urbanized, became literate and… emptied itself even more.
How can this apparent contradiction be explained?
Part of the answer lies in the incentives that democracy and European integration themselves have created. Leaving Portugal, traveling around the world and being able to reside legally in another state has become much easier and cheaper. Portugal entered the EEC in 1986 with a minimum wage of just over 22 thousand escudos – equivalent to around 112 euros, when the average for European countries with a legal minimum wage was already around 450 to 550 euros per month. A Portuguese person earning the minimum wage would need to save two entire salaries to buy a round-trip ticket to Paris – the fare regulated by IATA reached 240 euros today.
Inequality was so abrupt that emigration was, for many, the only way to access a European standard of living.
From the 1990s onwards, the deregulation of European airspace and the emergence of low-cost companies transformed mobility into a common consumer good. In 2026, a Lisbon – Paris return ticket could cost 50 euros – less than 7% of the national minimum wage and the price of the Lisbon-Porto train ticket. A Lisbon-New York flight, which in 1986 absorbed the equivalent of seven minimum wages, today can be done for around three quarters or even half of one… Circulation is no longer a privilege.
This democratization of mobility created a new species of emigrant. It is the Portuguese who leave for a few months for Luxembourg, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, earn – not always legally – what the Portuguese market does not pay them and return. To come back later. They don’t break with Portugal – they live between two countries, two markets, two salary realities. The phenomenon is not new, but its scale and normality are certainly unprecedented. And, in the process, as is customary in times of emigration, they use forum shopping in public services and social benefits.
The story of Portuguese emigration is no longer the story of a people fleeing poverty. It is, increasingly, the story of a people who travel – because they legally can, because the salary difference still pays off and because the ticket is cheap.
While Portugal breaks emigration records, it also receives more immigrants than it has ever had in its history. In 2024, the AIMA report counted more than 1.5 million foreign citizens residing in Portugal. We are a country of origin and a country of destination, as we have never been. And not having taken the due consequences of this for the proper functioning of the State, in the two movements and realities in question (the two million customers outside and the half million customers inside), in Health, Justice, security, borders, nationality and identity, Education, etc., is an exclusively Portuguese political responsibility, moreover in a context of increasing the volume of fees and taxes in the face of the very profitable flows of immigrants and tourists.
It is in this context that a political discourse that has gained ground among us, which considers immigration as a threat and calls for a supposed essential “portugality”, becomes particularly disconcerting.
Disconcerting from the outset because the data leaves no room for ambiguity – the Portuguese emigrate so much that, proportionally, we are today one of the countries in Europe with the most citizens outside its borders, surpassed only by Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Croatia.
Portuguese emigrants, currently more than 20% of the population, also do not always want to be examples of fanciful integration into new spaces, nor is this required of them. And sanctifying national identity while pretending to ignore that the country has only worked, for decades, because it has a reserve of imported and convenient labor, is an intellectual gymnastics of rare agility.
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