Parliamentary Group

Assembly of the Republic-Palace of S. Bento-1249-068 Lisbon-Phone: 21391 9233-Fax: 21391 7456 Email: gpcds@pp. parlamento.pt-http://cdsnoparlamento.pp. parliamento.pt

Draft Resolution No. 78 /XI

It recommends the Government to draw up a quantitative study and

qualifier of the new Portuguese diaspora in the world

Exhibition of reasons

In the past decade, Portugal has seen a massive effort of its generations

university-students-students and teachers-and their families in the achievement of

opportunities for study abroad, under the Erasmus programme. They are today

rare those who did not have an opportunity to study at European Universities

and out of world-renowned Europe, recognized poles of competitiveness

academics and excellence. Many of these young Portuguese continued their

studies outside Portugal and certainly others so many have chosen to develop their

professional activity in such competitive labour markets as the north-

american, the french, the German, the british or the spaniard, to focus only the

more evident.

The present and future Portuguese emigration has some components that are

substantially different from those that characterized traditional emigration.

In these segments has typically higher qualifications, a recognized

ability to integrate into highly competitive job markets and

integrates, without major problems, in the competitors and demanding societies that the

welcome. This new type of emigration is, moreover, in many cases, the translation

positive of freedom of movement within the new economic and social spaces

transnational in which Portugal integrates and, well thus, accompanies the reality of

increasingly global markets and the intense and open internationalization of the

economics. And lastly, both this new facts and positions won by the

second and third generations of the oldest Portuguese emigration in the countries and

societies where they deploy the Portuguese communities with greater weight and

tradition, translates into that the new Portuguese diaspora and luster-descent

behaves, in the destination countries and in various regions of the world, posts of influence

and non-negligible projection, in the cultural, scientific, social, economic plans,

academic or polytic.

According to the Emigration Observatory-created in 2008, on the basis of a

protocol between the Directorate General for Consular Affairs and Communities

Portuguese (DGACCP) and the CIES/ISCTE-Centre for Research and Studies of

Sociology, ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL)-, we have more than

a million emigrants in countries with the importance of France (567 thousand), of the

USA (217), Brazil (213), Switzerland (157), Canada (150), Spain (136), Germany (91),

United Kingdom (77), Venezuela (53) or Luxembourg (41).

These indicators are important in order to quantitatively affer the expression of the

diaspora Portuguese in the world and not least to accompany it in the plan of the

numbers, but it does not reflect with rigour and in more demanding terms the one that is the

its current reality in the qualitative plan, in terms of motivations and ambitions of

professional and business composition, projection and local influence.

Taking into account this qualitative evolution of our diaspora and, still, flows

migratory that characterize it in recent years, surely more dispersed in

terms of destinations, it would be extremely important that the Ministry of Business

Foreigners promoted a strategic plan for the diaspora, starting from

quantify it rigorously, identify its socio-economic typology, which age ranges

the characterize, what qualifications they have, what the main professional activities

that carry out, what their local problems and ambitions of life are.

The new Portuguese diaspora has also today a set of instruments to its

have to put it to a step from Portugal. Internet social networks, travel of

low cost aeroplane, dynamic cultural and socio-business organizations that the

put in permanent contact with the rest, and instant access to the

information.

Portugal must know to frame and harness economically and politically its

emigration, in particular the most qualified, as vector of its foreign policy,

today potentiated by a no-number of internet-based social networks,

promoting their interests abroad by creating a local lobbying dynamic,

but creating also conditions so that this diaspora can come to invest in

Portugal in the future, either by affinity with the country of origin, or by the potential

that the Portuguese Language allows in the acceleration of projects in common.

In these terms, and under the provisions of Article 156º of the Constitution of the Republic

Portuguese, the Assembly of the Republic recommends to the Government:

1. Which to undertake the quantitative and qualitative study of the new diaspora

Portuguese in the world;

2. That it promotes concrete measures in its foreign policy, in concert

with other Ministries, in the sense of revealing a paradigm shift

face to this new Portuguese diaspora putting it in the centre of its

actions, making it a true advance line of our diplomacy

a little all over the world.

Palace of Saint Benedict, March 10, 2010

The Deputies