Portugal as a Semi‐peripheral Country in the Global Migration System

Abstract

Although Portugal has traditionally produced many emigrants, the last 30 years have also shown increasing immigration. This increase in immigration has drawn attention away from the fact that significant emigration from Portugal continues. In this article, some of the main characteristics of migrations to and from Portugal are highlighted from a systemic perspective. The article shows that Portugal is both a receiving country and a sending country in the global migration system, and that it integrates several of the main migration systems at different levels. It is suggested that Portugal’s participation in existing migration systems is best captured and explained by conceptualizing it as a semi‐peripheral society, one that is part of a core region of the world system (the European Union) and displays a number of characteristics of both central and peripheral countries. The concept of semi‐periphery enables one to recognize the existence of what could be termed a quasi or emergent migratory system: the Lusophone migration system, which one can conceive as communicating intensively with other macro migratory systems. Observing the country’s migratory dynamics from the last two decades, and especially the migration flows that bond the Portuguese‐speaking countries, one may view the Lusophone migration system as able to combine different levels of centers that (in some moments, and given certain conditions) could evolve into a bicephalous, or even tricephalous, center. These centers function as bonds among several other migration systems, and it is in the middle of this Lusophone migration system that the semi‐peripheral role of Portugal becomes evident, as it can be core and periphery at the same time.

New Migration Dynamics on the South-Western Periphery of Europe: Theoretical Reflections on the Portuguese Case

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Inscrições No Espaço Social: Os Imigrantes Brasileiros No Grande Porto

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Immigration and the Ambivalence of the School: Between Inclusion and Exclusion of Migrant Youth

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