Highly skilled migration in Portugal: an overview

• Autor(a) principal: Peixoto, João
• Data de Publicação: 2004
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/2029
• topic: International Migration; Skilled Workers; Economic Sociology; Portugal

International migration of highly skilled labour in Portugal has been object of scarce attention. The large volume of unskilled and low skilled movements occurred since the 60s – first emigration and recently immigration – explains the only marginal effort that has been done to understand it. In what concerns emigration, it is known that since the 60s some highly skilled outflows have been taking place, including a fraction of scientists and researchers. Some of these left the country and some are known to be carrying excellent work in their fields. The overall outflows increased since the mid-70s, after the modernisation of the country, and targeted more diverse areas, including business. However, they never amounted to a significant quantitative number and they are not considered to be a problem. In what concerns immigration, some flows have also been occurring, also related to multiple areas of work. Since the 60s, movements occurring in the framework of multinational corporations have dominated them, along with other business-related flows. The former paralleled the trends of foreign direct investment, whilst the second resulted from specific migratory sources, including Brazil. In relative terms, the highly skilled inflow has been substantial, gathering almost a third of all legal immigrants in recent decades. Despite its importance, this movement only rarely has been understood as problematic. In the next sections we will review, first, the trends on highly skilled immigration and, second, emigration. In both cases we will use the (few) available statistical indicators together with some qualitative evidence gathered by some research on this field. Finally, we will conclude, examining the balance between the movements and trying to evaluate the existence or the potential for any form of brain drain in Portugal.