Portugal’s Jobless Graduates Flee to Africa and Brazil

Despite troubled histories, colonial powers and their former colonies have maintained close relations, largely due to shared languages. This often resulted in what’s been called “brain drain,” the large-scale immigration of professionals from the former colonies to the former colonial powers in search of economic opportunity. Lucy Ash of BBC News describes a reversal in the traditional migration pattern, including stories of a young Portuguese teacher who searched for work all over Europe and a woman in advertising replaced by an unpaid intern. Both left Portugal and its stagnating economy for jobs paying higher wages in former colonies, including Brazil, Angola and Mozambique. It’s estimated that one in 10 graduates leaves Portugal to find work, refusing to stick around to endure or resolve economic problems not of their making. Once it was the unskilled who left Portugal to find work, but now it’s the skilled and well-educated who migrate, leveraging their capabilities in the emerging markets. – YaleGlobal