Over 70 thousand Portuguese left the country in 2022
Spain was the main emigration destination.
In 2022, around 70 thousand Portuguese emigrated, five thousand more than in 2021, according to the statistical report “Portuguese Emigration 2023”, released this Tuesday.
The number is close to the 80 thousand registered in 2019, the last year before the pandemic, thus confirming a return of Portuguese emigration patterns to pre-pandemic levels.
The report now released – later than usual, which enabled it to have more concrete data in some cases and reduce its reliance on estimates – states that the data points to “a possible stabilization in the coming years, at a level between 70 and 75 thousand annual departures”.
For Rui Pena Pires, coordinator of the study by the Emigration Observatory the increase is not worrying, as long as the numbers stabilize at the current level.
Emigration profile
In regards to emigration destinations, Spain topped the 2022 list, with 11,001 people emigrants, followed by France (10,216) and Switzerland (9,948). The United Kingdom, which topped this list for some time and which in 2021, already falling, was still the choice for 13,551 Portuguese emigrants, was unable to captivate more than 7,941 Portuguese that year, a drop of 41.4% between the two years.
Outside of Europe, Mozambique, which is the only non-European country to be in the ten most popular destinations for Portuguese people, also registered a very sharp drop, in the order of 78.3%. In 2021, 6619 Portuguese emigrated to this African country, but in 2022 only 1439 moved there.
Without a major change in profile in recent years, Portuguese emigration continues to be characterized by great heterogeneity, the report states, with people with lower qualifications emigrating to countries that are more traditionally associated with it, such as France and Switzerland, while Scandinavian countries or the Netherlands attract mainly more qualified people.
And, despite much talk about young emigration – which has always been a reality, since the youngest are those of emigrate the most – it is clear that the Portuguese who living outside are still, above all, older people.
In OECD countries, for example, Portuguese emigrants over the age of 64 represented 9% of the total in 2001 and 17% in 2011. But this reality is not identical in all countries – in France, in 2020, the Portuguese with the most aged 55 represented 51% of the total number of Portuguese emigrants, while in the United Kingdom, in 2021, the percentage of Portuguese emigrants over the age of 64 did not exceed 5.9%.
The aging of Portuguese emigrants, especially in the more traditional destinations, is a scenario that largely stems from historical emigration, which reached very high values in the middle of the last century that current numbers are far from reaching, even if we look at the highest value in century, with 120 thousand departures recorded in 2013.
Emigration nation
Earlier this year, the Emigration Observatory revealed data that showed that Portugal is today the European country that, proportionally, has the largest number of emigrants and the eighth in the world.
According to the institute, in the last 20 years alone, the country has seen more than 1.5 million citizens leave. In total, there are today around 2.1 million Portuguese people spread across the planet.