In a report titled “Implications for territorial cohesion, public policies and migration governance,” the structure within the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum warned that the country’s interior is changing and requires new responses from the State, local authorities, and public services.
It is “essential to strengthen the institutional capacity of municipalities with strong growth in the foreign population”, along with strengthening “labour inspection” with “decent housing and transport” services for these populations, the document states.
The authors argue that migration data should be integrated “in real time into the country’s health, education and housing planning”, instead of the “current disconnect between statistical production, sectoral planning and decision-making”, which “significantly limits the responsiveness of public policies”.
The document warns of the “overburdening of local public services, the precariousness of migrant work in rural areas and the intensification of social tensions associated with residential segregation” as risk factors, stressing that the “absence of public responses tailored to this new migratory geography could exacerbate territorial inequalities, weaken social cohesion and compromise local governance capacity in multiple territories”.
Resident foreign population
In 2024, the foreign population residing in Portugal – 1,543,697 people – “no longer concentrated exclusively in large metropolitan areas” and this “new migratory geography” shows “a growing dependence on foreign labour in sectors such as intensive agriculture, tourism, industry, logistics and care, while helping to mitigate depopulation and demographic ageing in large areas of the interior”.
For this reason, the authors of the OM, led by sociologist Pedro Góis, propose “a set of structural measures, namely, strengthening the institutional capacity of municipalities, territorial differentiation of policies, integration of real-time data into public planning, combating misinformation and enhanced cooperation between countries of origin and destination, which are essential to ensure more effective, equitable and sustainable migration governance”.
Role of emigrants
In recent years, “in these sparsely populated areas”, immigrants have ceased to play a merely complementary role and have taken on an absolutely structural function in sustaining local economic activity.
Immigrants have contributed to “mitigating depopulation processes, reactivating services, keeping schools running and sustaining local economies that, in the absence of immigration, would be at risk of functional collapse”, according to the report published today.
Therefore, “this new migratory cycle poses challenges” to public policies that “remain, to a large extent, anchored in an urban-metropolitan model of reception and integration, revealing difficulties in responding to the growing internalisation of immigration and the administrative fragility of many low-density municipalities”.
Without “robust coordination between migration policies, territorial development policies, housing, health, education and employment policies,” the authors warn, “the risks of job insecurity, residential segregation and social tensions” increase.
Immigration by region
The Algarve is a region of strong migratory pressure where two distinct profiles coexist – economic immigrants and “retired or economically independent foreign residents” – a situation that puts more “pressure on the housing market” and “deepens social inequalities and accentuates processes of socio-spatial segmentation”.
According to the report, the Alentejo, particularly “municipalities such as Odemira, Ferreira do Alentejo, Beja and Serpa, have become central territories for super-intensive agriculture and agro-export production, deeply anchored in the use of migrant labour”.
The central and northern interior, on the other hand, are witnessing the “repopulation of ageing and depopulated territories” and “low-density municipalities have begun to integrate foreign workers into elderly care, small-scale agriculture, catering, commerce and indirect public services”.
Reduced administrative capacity
However, “the reduced administrative and technical capacity of many of these municipalities limits the response in terms of integration, housing, health and education policies,” warn the authors, pointing out that this diversity requires “solutions tailored to the scale and specific characteristics of each territory,” not least because there are municipalities where the percentage of foreigners has altered the social fabric.
“Cases such as Aljezur, Vila do Bispo, Monchique, Idanha-a-Nova, Vila Nova de Poiares, among others,” are “true laboratory territories for migration policy in Portugal, where the positive effects and risks associated with immigration are most intense and immediate,” they warn.