The goal in this section is to discuss the problems and hardships en- countered by the immigrant communities when it comes to their inte-
gration. Thus, the primary question posed to the association representa- tives was:
– What are the most significant integration difficulties encountered by community members?
In analysing this question, it is first important to draw attention to the fact that the three groups– Angolan, Brazilian and Eastern European – find themselves at different integration stages. The fact that different flows at different time periods have encountered different problems, as well as different policies designed by the host society’s governments, implies that one group may be experiencing integration difficulties that other communities, with longer migration histories, have gone through in the past.
Table 7.1 provides a summary of the most referred to integration prob- lems according to the respective association representatives.2The data illustrates both communalities and problems unique to the specific groups.3Given the differing integration situations, I now provide an ana- lysis of the most significant problems outlined by each group, as well as highlight specificities. In doing this, I will take into consideration the manner in which these integration problems often intertwine (e.g. how being undocumented might lead to labour exploitation or how low levels of education and job market qualifications will often correlate with resid- ing in low-cost, marginalised urban areas). Differential shading of the cells in Table 7.1 enables a visual impression of the differences between the three immigrant groups.
7.1.1 The Angolan community
The history of Angolan emigration differs somewhat from the traditional economically driven model of migration, being instead closely linked with social-political factors such as the social instability and climate of insecurity experienced in Angola (Possidónio 2005). These factors and insecurities (incited by the process of decolonisation and the civil war that followed) brought about two different immigration waves, com- posed of individuals of different classes, qualifications and citizenship rights; the main commonality among them being that, in both cases, the majority came as refugees.4 The two flows I refer to can be defined as the decolonisation wave (post-1974) and the civil war wave (early 1990s).5
The decolonisation wave was, in large part, made up of retornados. The remainder of this flow (and of a lesser numerical significance) was made up of Luso-Angolans,6 individuals who were of Angolan descent, but who possessed Portuguese citizenship.7
Table 7.1 Most referred to integration problems faced by the Angolan, Brazilian and Eastern European immigrants according to the respective association representatives
Type of integration problem Angolan
(N=27)
Brazilian (N=25)
Eastern European (N=30)
Frequency % Frequency % Frequency %
Housing issues 19 70.4 7 28 9 30
Low levels of education and job market qualifications
19 70.4 2 8 - - Discrimination/racism/ stereotyping 18 66.7 9 36 3 10 Legality/documentation/ nationality/rights 12 44.4 20 80 25 83.3
Work issues (e.g. labour contracts, exploitation)
10 37 18 72 25 83.3
Limited access to services (e.g. social, health, education and training programmes)
9 33.3 12 48 19 63.3
Homesickness/loneliness/ distance from family
- - 10 40 15 50 Lack of acceptance/closed society 3 11.1 10 40 2 6.7 Climate/geographical aspects - - 9 36 - - Language 2 7.4 5 20 15 50 Academic/qualification equivalency 1 4 3 12 15 50
Source: Author’s own compilation
In relation to the civil war wave, the vast majority of the individuals who came to Portugal in the early part of the 1990s did not hold Portuguese citizenship. Coming to Portugal in an undocumented fashion– as refu- gees escaping the civil war that ravaged Angola– this group was, in large part, young and unqualified, with few or no resources or social network ties in the host country.8
Taking these sub-communities into consideration, distinct paths of in- tegration are thus identified. While the retornados are, in large part, now well-integrated into Portuguese society, it is those who occupy the lower socio-economic ranks that experience the greater difficulties (primarily consisting of the Luso-Angolan element of the first wave and those be- longing to the second wave). Naturally, the greater part of the debate fo- cuses on these individuals.
In discussing the integration difficulties outlined by the interviewees, the housing variable serves as a good indicator of integration, given that it can serve as a measuring stick of the financial wealth of an individual or family, as well as providing clues with regard to other characteristics,
namely the level of schooling and socio-professional status. In other words, low levels of education and unqualified job market occupation reflect a lack of resources. This, in turn, is also reflected in the residen- tial occupation– in low-value, marginalised urban areas such as slums, social housing and run-down neighbourhoods.9Table 7.1 clearly demon- strates that housing problems remain paramount for the Angolan com- munity, to a far greater extent than for the other two immigrant groups surveyed.10
The following quote helps to explain the roots of the spatial segrega- tion and socio-economic exclusion experienced by Angolan and Luso- Angolan families:
People were marginalised right from the start. They got their first job in an illegal fashion, in cleaning or in construction and those are the jobs many still have today and the kind of job they’ll have tomorrow because they have no qualifications. […] With no money, no rights, where were these people going to live? They ended up living in these abandoned buildings and living in shacks because they had no other options. They never had any rights to social housing; they were‘ille- gals’. Then they [the government] came forward with the processes of legalisation and re-housing in the’90s. Many got their documents, others did not. Meanwhile, with the re-housing projects that took place, the housing problem was resolved for some, but still this didn’t improve integration for most (A).
The integration problems felt are thus not only rooted in the illegal man- ner in which many arrived in Portugal in the past, compounded by the lack of qualifications and low educational levels of the immigrants, but also owed much to the fact that Portuguese (national and local) govern- ments were not prepared to receive these immigrants, leaving many An- golans still marginalised in many aspects of their lives.11
The coexistence of poor housing conditions and social problems (e.g. poverty, illiteracy, etc.) renders the residents of these areas especially vul- nerable to social exclusion,12 limiting their chances of finding a better job or of developing social relations with others from outside the neigh- bourhood. As argued by Zhou (1997), the high concentration of immi- grants in segregated and run-down neighbourhoods leads to the foster- ing of contact with other individuals– often their neighbours – who are equally unprivileged and marginalised. Their social networks are thus limited, as their expectations are shaped by a surrounding environment in which poverty and the lack of opportunities for upward mobility are widespread. This is well articulated by an association representative:
In many cases there are various generations living under one roof. Many have no way of leaving these neighbourhoods because they have no resources that could help them leave.13They have their lives here; many have had the same neighbours since the first day they arrived. That is why many people would rather live here than be re- housed elsewhere. Once they’re re-housed, the neighbourhood net- works come to an end. They may be poor but at least they have who to count on – their neighbours, their family members who brought them to the neighbourhood when they arrived in this country, and so on… (A).
Issues of discrimination and racism against the community are also em- phasised as a major integration obstacle. However, respondents ex- pressed this as a problem not exclusive to black Angolans, but to people of colour in general. Such discrimination and racism are pointed out as coming in various forms and in various life sectors:
There is racial discrimination against black individuals. Take the real estate market, for example: a black person wants to buy an apartment in a new building, we know of situations of agents telling people that the apartments are already sold because they are afraid that other buyers won’t like living next to black people and that having black people in the building will devalue the properties. […] The same ap- plies to labour discrimination. We might be qualified people, and even possess more qualifications than a Portuguese person, but we will never get that management job or that supervisor’s job because those are for white people. We’re stereotyped as being unqualified and that’s how we’re suppose to remain (A).
As this statement implies, discrimination thus means the lack of accep- tance and of equal treatment, both reflected in numerous areas of inte- gration, such as employment and the housing market. This phenomen- on is by no stretch of the imagination unique to the Portuguese situation, for, as various studies have pointed out (Brown 1984; Williams 1987; Solomos 1988, 2003), minorities of other discriminated categories are often met by both overt and indirect racism which further impedes their opportunities and capacity for social mobility.
Other integration obstacles stressed by the Angolan interviewees in- clude document acquisition, legality and rights, work-related issues and having no access to public services or information. These concerns, how- ever, often fall under the banner of legalisation, often seen as a solution that would remedy the other problems. Although the regularisation schemes of the 1990s legalised many Angolans, questions remain:
We have some Angolans who went through the initial phases of lega- lisation in the 1990s whose documents have expired and, for what- ever reason, they have not been able to renew them. It is important to find out if these people are today considered legal or not. This must be analysed. Then there are those who keep coming– the newly ar- rived who can’t do anything because they are illegal and might end up with employers who will take advantage of them (A).
Issues dealing with regularisation and labour, however, are not as central among the Angolan associations as they are among the other two more recently arrived groups, as I will now show.
7.1.2 The Brazilian community
Brazilian immigrants in Portugal are historically profiled in a similar fashion to Angolans. Here too there are two distinct groups that must be taken into consideration before community integration issues are to be discussed, each group tied to different immigration flows. These two groups can be characterised as the qualified wave (pre-1997) and the un- qualified wave (post-1998).14
The first Brazilians to migrate to Portugal were either political refu- gees,15Portuguese descendents and their families, or highly trained pro- fessionals who came to take up positions in the areas of telecommunica- tions, computers, advertising and dentistry (see Chapter 6). It is these individuals that make up the qualified wave.
The year 1998 is considered to be the start of the second wave of Bra- zilian immigration to Portugal (Casa do Brasil de Lisboa 2004): the un- qualified wave. In Casa do Brasil de Lisboa’s (2004) study on post-1998 immigrants, the results identified the greater majority as young (75 per cent between the ages of twenty and 35), 64 per cent were males, 60 per cent had completed secondary school while seven per cent has a univer- sity degree. The most typical occupations were in retail and sales, restau- rants and catering, and construction.16
Once again, in similar fashion to the Angolan community, distinct paths of integration are identified in relation to these sub-communities. While the qualified pre-1997 group is today generally well integrated, the recently arrived post-1998 sub-community experience greater difficul- ties. Unsurprisingly, the greater part of the debate presented by the asso- ciation representatives focused on the individuals comprising the second flow.
According to Table 7.1, documentation and employment issues are the problems that most preoccupy the Brazilian community. It is worth highlighting that the majority of Brazilians have entered Portugal as tourists.17 Although they are not illegal upon entry, they are not
authorised to work during their stay. Many, however, end up prolonging their‘visit’ and ignore this regulation. After obtaining a job, they find out that they are not eligible for a work visa and that in order to acquire one, they must return to Brazil.18Thus many Brazilians end up working clan- destinely in the Portuguese labour market, possessing no labour or so- cial rights.19Obtaining documentation and rights is also made difficult due to what the associations refer to as‘lack of knowledge and know- how’ in obtaining legal status and the steps involved in the acquisition process. In the words of one interviewee:
People don’t know too much about the laws; they don’t know how to go about renewing their visas and legalisation procedures. The bu- reaucracies and all the papers involved is an issue that people find hard to understand. But immigrants are not totally at fault for this. Access to information is a problem, be it from Portuguese institu- tions or from our own embassies; we are not informed. Immigrants don’t know their rights; they contribute to social security but don’t know what advantages they can gain from their contributions. Some- times I ask myself if it’s really worthwhile being documented in this country considering all the trouble one has to go through. I mean all you need is a social security number and your passport and you can work. All they (the Portuguese government) want is for the people to pay their taxes. Anybody can get a social security number. Legalisa- tion is one bureaucratic hassle after another. People will do it if they can take benefit from it, but a lot of people come here with the inten- tion of working, making money and returning. They don’t want to wait to get their papers to come here legally and they don’t want to take numerous days off work to become legal. If they get caught, it doesn’t really matter because nobody is going to put them on an air- plane and send them back to Brazil. They’ll just be back doing what they were doing the day before (B).20
For the short-term immigrant, quick financial gain often outweighs any sort of citizen rights and legality proceedings the host country may have to offer (Jordan and Duvell 2002; Weinstein 2002). Equally, the thoughts conveyed in the quote is that the manner in which the system is set up favours illegality and expresses that Brazilian immigrants don’t have a lot to lose when running the risk of being undocumented.
One area where being undocumented may bring about problems, however, is the employment sector. As previously highlighted, being in an illegal situation implies not having the right to a work contract. This, in turn, puts immigrants in a more susceptible position when it comes to being exploited.21The following statement exemplifies this notion:
The biggest problem is arriving here illegally and having no rights. This exposes individuals to being exploited and when they’re exploited, they can’t even go to the police. If he or she has no docu- ments and no contract, how’s that person going to prove that he or she’s being exploited? An employer can retain wages or not pay them at all and there’s nothing an undocumented immigrant can do. This leaves many [undocumented immigrants] one step away from a life of delinquency and poverty. There are a lot of Brazilians who are finding it hard to survive now; they are illegal and unemployed and can’t even feed themselves. Then, due to this situation [being undo- cumented and having no labour rights], they also have no privileges, no rights to accessing services. It’s a vicious cycle. People come here thinking they’re not going to have any problems – that Portugal ac- cepts Brazilians as if they were their own sons– but they quickly find out that that is not so (B).
Two points are worth noting in this quote. First, being an undocumen- ted worker implies that the immigrant’s life is ‘in the hands of the em- ployer’. Working under this status is often a gamble that may not pay off, along with the fact that proving exploitation may often be an unattain- able goal (Jordan and Duvell 2002). Second, the interviewee is making a connection between illegality, labour problems and other consequences such as having no rights of citizenship and rights to social services, re- ferring to this connection as‘vicious cycle’ whereby one issue will often have consequences on the next. The Brazilian community, however, is not unique to this pattern.
Secondary integration problems also worth highlighting include homesickness and loneliness, lack of acceptance on the part of the host society, and climate differences. These three factors are expressed in the following extract:
There’s this problem of feeling alone; of being in a strange place. Brazilians don’t have the experience of leaving their country – of liv- ing in another countries – so for many, this is a frightening experi- ence, namely because we leave behind those elements that provided us with the safety we need, emotionally, psychologically and cultural- ly. Here we are among people who are different from us so we can never be fully integrated because we can’t completely be ourselves; we can never feel at home here. As well, the climate here is hard for us and we have a hard time adjusting to it. You can’t imagine how hard it is for us when it’s the middle of winter here and its ten de- grees, while back in Brazil it’s 35 and everybody’s at the beach. So I mean these are the culture shocks that make it hard to adjust and integrate into this society (B).
These problems are based on feelings of integration. Measuring‘felt’ in- tegration is, however, a more complex process than measuring integra- tion according to instruments, policies, programmes, etc. Of the three groups, the Brazilian associations seemed to express the greatest diffi- culty in adjusting psychologically to the new environment.22 Nonethe- less, in the words of one association leader:‘Brazilians, sooner or later, get used to new situations and new environments– what is needed is a little bit of time’ (B).
7.1.3 The Eastern European community
Similar to the most recent flows from Brazil, nearly all Eastern Euro- pean immigrants in Portugal arrived on an irregular basis. With the in- troduction of permanência authorisation status in 2001 (see chapter 4), many today possess this kind of documentation. As highlighted in Table 7.1, this group’s associations also emphasise legality – not only the diffi- culties and bureaucracies that involve obtaining documentation but also the annual renewing of the legal status – along with work issues and problems in accessing social services as the most significant integration barriers encountered. The interconnectedness between the three issues is highlighted in the following statement:
Illegality is the most serious issue. It affects everything else. If you want to legalise yourself, you can’t do it if you don’t have a work con- tract. The problem is that there are still a lot of employers interested in hiring people who will work without a labour contract; workers