In 2021 more Portuguese immigrated and the UK was the main destination

The document, accessed by Lusa Agency and presented today at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Lisbon, is an initiative of the Secretary of State for Portuguese Communities and is based on data collected by the Migration Laboratory. Iscte – Center from the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, with institutions responsible for immigration statistics.

The immigration report for 2021 shows that in that year, around 60,000 Portuguese will have emigrated, 15,000 more than in 2020, which was the year with the lowest number of departures recorded in 20 years, partly due to the impact of the Covid pandemic. -19 in the People’s Movement.

Between 2019 and 2020, the document says, “immigration will drop by around 44% as a result of the combined effects of the pandemic crisis and ‘Brexit’. [saída do Reino Unido da União Europeia]”.

“Policies of incarceration created barriers to mobility and created a global economic crisis at an important rate that explains the sudden stop in international migration,” the authors write.

In 2021, half of the Portuguese who did so in 2013 emigrated, with the exception of 2020, when lower values ​​were recorded only in 2003. With a peak in 2013, there has been a downward trend in immigration since that year.

In 2021, migration began a “significant recovery”, in Portugal, growing by around 33% compared to 2020.

Even so, “they have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels, but are again on a growth trajectory”.

The authors of the report consider that “it is still too early to know whether this growth will be sustainable or whether immigration will stabilize at a lower level than expected before the pandemic”, leaning more towards the latter hypothesis, adding that “the long-term consequences of ‘Brexit’.

“Contrary to what happened with the pandemic, the consequences of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union persisted over time, making entry to what was once a key destination for Portuguese immigration more difficult – at least for less qualified migrants.” , it emphasized.

Citing data made available by the United Nations in 2022, the exhibit points to 2,631,559 Portuguese immigrants – those born in Portugal living abroad, in 2019, about 26% of the country’s resident population, the eighth largest country in the world. A world with more immigrants.

Globally, in the same year, there were more than 247 million international migrants, or 3.4% of the world’s population.

In 2021, of the 23 destination countries with the highest flows of Portuguese immigration, more than half (14) were European.

More than 5,000 Portuguese arrivals last year, according to statistics, are all European countries.

The United Kingdom was the leading destination for Portuguese immigrants (12,000 entries), followed by Spain (8,000), Switzerland (8,000), France (6,000) and Germany (6,000).

In the year under review, the number of Portuguese immigrants in the United Kingdom totaled 156,295, 5.7% less than in 2020, the majority (53.1%) were women and only 2.5% were over 65 years of age.

This indicator makes the United Kingdom the second country with the youngest Portuguese immigrant community, after Ireland.

The Portuguese represented 1.6% of foreign-born people living in the United Kingdom, with the fourth largest population of Portuguese immigrants in the world.

Outside Europe, the main destination countries for Portuguese immigration are from the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP): Angola (1,708 in 2019) and Mozambique (1,000 in 2016, the last year for which data are available).

With the exception of Australia (a 48.7% decrease) and Macau (a 73.1% decrease), all countries analyzed had a “slight increase” in inputs.

Men migrate more than women, and in terms of age, the movement is mainly made up of young people.

With 598,000 individuals, France continues to have the world’s largest population of residents in Portugal as a result of massive immigration in the 1960s/70s.

Switzerland has 207,000 people born in Portugal, followed by the United States (162,000), the United Kingdom (156,000), Brazil (138,000 in 2010), Canada (134,000) and Germany (115,000).

23% of immigrants living in Brazil (in 2010), 9% of those living in France and Cape Verde (2018) and 8% of immigrants in Switzerland were born in Portugal.

SMM // LFS