Migração qualificada do Brasil para Portugal: dinâmica recente e perspectivas para o projeto migratório

Abstract

Migration of skilled individuals has been at the center of academic and political debates in different parts of the world. Changes in the international context have contributed to the increasing participation of this population in international migrations. Therefore, in recent decades, transformations in skilled migrations have become evident. This highlights the need to understand how this type of mobility has changed across different countries. The Brazilian community abroad has been growing over the years, and although these departures represent a small portion of Brazil's total population, the stock of the Brazilian community abroad is already larger than the total population of 15 Brazilian states, when compared individually. As skilled migration has been growing more rapidly than low-skilled migration, there is a clear need to study this type of migration. According to the United Nations (2019), the main destinations for Brazilians are countries in the Global North. In Europe, Portugal stands out as the main destination for Brazilians in recent years, with constant repercussions on this flow. With this in mind, this thesis aims to analyze the factors and characteristics that can explain the growth, transformations, and trends of skilled Brazilian migration to Portugal since 2011. For this purpose, both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. As sources of quantitative data, Eurostat databases (2011 to 2021) and the Censuses of the National Statistics Institute (INE) of Portugal (2011 and 2021) were used. For the qualitative part, in-depth interviews were conducted with skilled Brazilian migrants residing in Portugal, who were identified through the Snowball Sampling method. Among the results, it is noteworthy that there are low incomes and a lack of absorption by the Brazilian productive structure of part of the skilled population, the highest growth ever identified of skilled Brazilians in the history of Portugal, the faster growth of these people in the Northern municipalities, despite the majority still living in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (AML), the high frequency of family migration among the skilled, fueled by networks, and the emphasis on motivations for the migration project, related to violence in Brazil, the search for a better quality of life in Portugal, the pursuit of professional insertion and development in Portugal, and migration for study purposes.