Portugal has a long history of emigration. Economic hardship, political conditions, limited opportunities and the search for a better life sent generations of Portuguese beyond our borders. They crossed the Atlantic to Brazil, Venezuela, Bermuda, the United States and Canada, but they also travelled in enormous numbers within Europe, particularly to France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany and later the United Kingdom and other European countries.
That history is not as distant as it can sometimes seem. United Nations estimates counted approximately 1.8 million Portuguese emigrants living outside Portugal in 2024, with about 1.29 million living elsewhere in Europe. Europe now accounts for roughly 72% of the Portuguese emigrant population.
And Portuguese people are still leaving. The Emigration Observatory estimates that approximately 70,000 people emigrated from Portugal in 2024. At the same time, there is another movement taking place: Portuguese people are coming home. The most recent complete return data recorded 28,286 Portuguese-born people moving back to Portugal in 2023, following more than 32,000 in 2022 and 33,000 in 2021.
Behind those numbers are generations of families who understand what it is to arrive somewhere without knowing quite how things work. To learn another language or another way of living. To miss home while building a new one. To belong to two places at once. And, sometimes, to return and discover that even home can feel new again.
Today, people from other parts of the world are making that journey in the opposite direction and recognising something in Portugal that makes them want to stay.
Our own history gives us good reason to understand both the beauty and the difficulty of that choice.
We know something about what it means to be the newcomer. Welcome.
