Over the years it has been a safe haven for hundreds of thousands of qualified young Portuguese, from various regions, but the United Kingdom is no longer a major destination for Portuguese immigration. Here is the Netherlands, and the sun is less, but the living and working conditions are hard to beat.
Last year, 4,892 Portuguese entered the Netherlands, a record, the Migration Observatory said, citing data from the Dutch Statistics Agency. Portuguese immigration to the Central European country has been increasing since 2015 (except for a sharp drop in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic). In 2015, 1860 Portuguese entered; In 2022 there were 4533 people.
In 2023, the Portuguese represented only 1.6% of foreign arrivals, but qualified young people put Northern Europe and the Netherlands on the Portuguese immigration map.
4,414 Portuguese entered the United Kingdom in 2023. In 2015, 32,300 Portuguese immigrated to the United Kingdom. Since 2017, the number of migrants in the country has been decreasing due to the financial crisis. “Brexit““The decline was as rapid and intense as the growth”, notes the Atlas of Portuguese Settlement, It already pointed to the rise of the Netherlands earlier in the year.
There, high salaries, career advancement and flexibility in work add to the appeal of the United Kingdom: English is the native language in many companies in Amsterdam and Rotterdam.
While there is no data yet for 2023, it is estimated that 70 thousand Portuguese will have immigrated in 2022, five thousand more than the previous year. A migration watchdog report released a month ago noted that they mostly went to work in Spain, France and Switzerland.
The report has already pointed out that the drop in immigration to the United Kingdom justified fewer departures than pre-Covid levels (80 thousand people immigrated in 2019). “Strictly speaking, Portuguese immigration today is higher than pre-Covid levels in most of its main destinations”, the Observatory highlighted.
