Portuguese emigration after World War II — страница 3

historical periods, as well as available information on illegal departures to Europe after World War II, however, indicates that clandestine flows differ significantly from legal ones. Illegal Portuguese migrants tend to be isolated and unskilled males in their prime; this increases the likelihood that legal flows do not accurately reflect actual migratory flows between 1950 and 1988. 10 One corrective for the discrepancies in the official figures is to examine the relative attraction of the principal recipient countries. According to French and German records, we can correct the distribution in Table 10.2. Table 10.1 (Legal Departures)) shows that the two preferred European destinations (France and Germany) attracted 35 percent of the total between 1950 and 1988, and that the

three overseas destinations (Brazil, Canada, and the United States) attracted 47 percent. Table 10.2 (Legal and Illegal Departures), by contrast, indicates that the two key European destinations accounted for 59 percent of the total, and the three overseas destinations for just 30 percent, in the same period. TABLE 10.1 Principal Destinations of Portuguese Legal Emigration, 1950-1988 (in thousands) Legal Departures Percentage France 347 25.0 Brazil 321 23.0 United States 193 14.0 Germany 135 10.0 Canada 138 10.0 Other 241 18.0 TOTAL 1,375 100.0 TABLE 10.2 Principal Destinations of Portuguese Emigration, 1950-1988 (in thousands) Legal and Illegal Departures Percentage France 1,024 48.0 Brazil 321 15.0 United States 193 9.0 Germany 235 11.0 Canada 138 6.0 Other 241 11.0 TOTAL 2,152

100.0 We can also correct the yearly totals by destination (see Table 10.6), which helps to obtain a better sense of the evolution of the “true” Portuguese migratory flow. The first remarkable change indicated in Table 10.6 is the intensity of growth of the total migratory flow. The annual average number of departures jumped from 33,000 in 1955-59 to 55,000 in 1960-64, 110,000 in 1965-69, and 134,000 in 1970-74. The average declined drastically to 37,000 in 1975-79, the same level of average annual departures attained in the initial period (1950-54). Numbers decreased even further to 17,000 average departures between 1980 and 1988. This intense and sustained growth in the 1960s and early 1970s can be attributed to the Portuguese migratory flow to Europe, particularly to

France, which absorbed 60 percent of the total migratory flow in this period. Figura 1 – Não digitalizada. São precisos os dados para construir o gráfico. The data from Table 10.6 can be visually summarized in Figure 10.1. Both Table 10.6 and Figure 10.1 show that Portuguese emigration grew constantly and substantially from 1950, when departures numbered 22,000, to 1970, when departures numbered 183,000. It declined from 1971 to 1988, as departures dropped from 158,000 to 13,000. The peak years of Portuguese emigration after World War II occurred between 1965 and 1974, when the annual average number of departures reached 122,000. It can also be inferred that three major changes in preferred destinations took place between 1950 and 1979. In the first decade (1950-59), the

overseas flow was clearly dominant. Indeed, of the 350,000 departures, 327,000 (93 percent) went overseas. A single country, Brazil, absorbed 68 percent of the global total of departures. In the following decade (1960-69), the overseas flow lost its relevance. Europe attracted 68 percent of the total number of departures, with France absorbing 59 percent of the global total. This shift occurred in 1962-63. In 1962, total departures numbered 43,000, of which 24,000 went overseas (57 percent) and 19,000 went to Europe (43 percent). In 1963, the total number of departures numbered 55,000, of which 22,000 (41 percent) went overseas and 33,000 (59 percent) to Europe. Europe clearly dominated between 1963 and 1977, but from then on, overseas destinations became dominant again. The

European share fell from 56 percent in 1977 to 43 percent in 1978 and 39 percent in 1979. In the last period, 1980-88, overseas destinations accounted for 51 percent of all departures. The change in the relative weight of migratory flows overseas is not the only noticeable shift. Although they tended to decrease in absolute terms, overseas flows did not register any dramatic change before 1979. They did, however, register a major change in the absolute and relative weight of the receiving countries. In the early 1960s, the contraction of the flow to Brazil was quite dramatic: the average annual number of departures to that country fell from twelve thousand to three thousand between 1960-64 and 1965-69. The United States and Canada took Brazil’s place during this period; the