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Expats are moving to Portugal

latimes.com

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Re: Expats are moving to Portugal

#41

Post by wenc »

jorl17 wrote: post #10
nazavo wrote: post #6

Portugal has been extremely popular with the nomad community too. A good dozen of friends of mine have already moved there through NHR and lots more are in the works. There are also projects like rebase.co, which make things super easy to set up base in the country. It seems like it's getting to a point where Portugal so popular, it might steer people away from itself instead.

It's amazing that people within the country (I live in Portugal and am portuguese) mostly want to get out, and so many people seem to want to get in (to work outside). I genuinely don't 100% get it.

I've visited Portugal (Lisbon, Sintra, Porto, Guimarães). It has all the elements of an aspirational European destination minus the cost.

I speak Portuguese (Brazilian) but most Portuguese people in the cities all seem to speak good English. Portugal is beautiful, has temperate weather and long coastline, really good clean food (sopa de legumes, leitão, sardinhas, etc), friendly people and easy access to the rest of the EU. And unlike traditionally aspirational places like Italy or Spain which are harder to move to unless you have the right lineage (for getting a passport), Portugal is within reach of middle class Americans.

That said, I was told that salaries aren't high for locals. For what it's worth, most younger people in Italy and Spain don't think their economic life is all that great either. The money seems to be in northern/central Europe, i.e. well, mostly Germany.

There are many places in the world where it's nice to visit but not to live, I would say, Portugal is the opposite. I could realistically see myself living there.

Re: Expats are moving to Portugal

#42

Post by elevaet »

sfmike wrote: post #39
kmonsen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No this is white people

"white" people can't immigrate? Are they immobile ? What's preventing them from immigrating?

They were being facetious, it's a critique of the racist/classist tendency in our language to label people with brown skin living in another country as "immigrants" but white people as "ex-pats". It's related to the history of WASP colonialism.

Re: Expats are moving to Portugal

#43

Post by imran-iq »

sfmike wrote: post #39
kmonsen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No this is white people

"white" people can't immigrate? Are they immobile ? What's preventing them from immigrating?

They don't like being called immigrants since they use it in a mostly negative context, so they are expats :)

Re: Expats are moving to Portugal

#44

Post by deanCommie »

dimmke wrote: post #40
sometimeshuman wrote: post #38

I think people from coastal California, such as the couple featured in the article, take for granted the spontaneous joy when random friends and family pop into the city, because of a work trip for example, and try to meet up. And then proceed to have a deep meaningful conversation in your native language where you get each other's references, figures of speech, jokes, and are generally on the same wavelength. It see…

Portugal seriously sucks. The food is bad, and yeah you can see about all there is to see in both Lisboa and Porto in under a week. I was really turned off when I went there in November. I think it's a magnet for this stuff because it's cheaper than the rest of Europe and the government has openly marketed itself to this kind of thing (to the detriment of the citizens, who are being priced out of housing and a lot of…

> The food is bad

Dear, your credibility:

Goodbye.

Re: Expats are moving to Portugal

#45

Post by [deleted] »

sometimeshuman wrote: post #38

I think people from coastal California, such as the couple featured in the article, take for granted the spontaneous joy when random friends and family pop into the city, because of a work trip for example, and try to meet up. And then proceed to have a deep meaningful conversation in your native language where you get each other's references, figures of speech, jokes, and are generally on the same wavelength. It see…

[deleted]

Re: Expats are moving to Portugal

#46

Post by maxlamb »

jorl17 wrote: post #16
maxlamb wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reason is that the majority of people moving in to Portugal are nomads who already have high salaries, and the Portuguese trying to get out either have low salaries or are unemployed.

Most of my friends are very much employed, pretty smart (they'd get a job pretty much anywhere, probably FAANG, too) and they are either out of the country or want to get out. In general, they want higher salaries (like you mentioned), but there also seems to be a clear disdain for most of the portuguese cultural heritage, to be honest. This might be an ecochamber (I'd put money on it being the case) but most people…

It’s kind of ironic because a lot of Californians moving to Portugal are also trying to escape some aspects of their country’s culture they don’t like. Except they are also escaping insanely high cost of living, increasing violent crime and now almost yearly apocalyptic fires, power outages, dwindling tap water reserves and earthquakes. And unless you live in a very expensive part of town it’s hard to survive without a car in California or most of the U.S. I would love to live in a city like Lisbon where the public transportation is good enough that you don’t really need a car.

Re: Expats are moving to Portugal

#47

Post by elevaet »

jorl17 wrote: post #16
maxlamb wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reason is that the majority of people moving in to Portugal are nomads who already have high salaries, and the Portuguese trying to get out either have low salaries or are unemployed.

Most of my friends are very much employed, pretty smart (they'd get a job pretty much anywhere, probably FAANG, too) and they are either out of the country or want to get out. In general, they want higher salaries (like you mentioned), but there also seems to be a clear disdain for most of the portuguese cultural heritage, to be honest. This might be an ecochamber (I'd put money on it being the case) but most people…

Something interesting that I noticed learning Portuguese many years ago is that the word for "explore" is the same as for "exploit" (explorar).

Not that Portugal unique in its exploitative history, but this might speak to the mentality that the Portuguese "explorers" had when they went out into the world making their "great accomplishments".

Re: Expats are moving to Portugal

#48

Post by _v7gu »

elevaet wrote: post #42
sfmike wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"white" people can't immigrate? Are they immobile ? What's preventing them from immigrating?

They were being facetious, it's a critique of the racist/classist tendency in our language to label people with brown skin living in another country as "immigrants" but white people as "ex-pats". It's related to the history of WASP colonialism.

I think they tread the line in reverse here: I don't think LA Times would put out news that call for immigrants to "go home" but it's fair game when they call them expats.

Re: Expats are moving to Portugal

#49

Post by UncleEntity »

sometimeshuman wrote: post #38

I think people from coastal California, such as the couple featured in the article, take for granted the spontaneous joy when random friends and family pop into the city, because of a work trip for example, and try to meet up. And then proceed to have a deep meaningful conversation in your native language where you get each other's references, figures of speech, jokes, and are generally on the same wavelength. It see…

You know, as a (former) native Californian, if I were to use that argument against the people who migrated to California I’d probably be skewed alive.

Re: Expats are moving to Portugal

#50

Post by c_o_n_v_e_x »

et-al wrote: post #32
c_o_n_v_e_x wrote: post #7

Hong Kong expats fleeing HK to Singapore are currently gentrifying the SG real estate market. HK'r's are accustomed to paying far more money for much less space. Add this with the fact the incoming HK'r's are effectively "panic leasing" anything they can get their hands on by offering way over the ask. I have friends who've had their rents increase from +30% to +115% when renewals come up.

Please correct me, but I thought Singapore was already relatively expensive compared to the rest of Asia given its tax haven status.

Yes, Singapore is expensive and getting worse. Low taxes are nice (for everyone except Americans). SG Citizens enjoy certain benefits like the ability to purchase subsidized housing which helps to reduce the cost of living. Foreigners such as myself are stuck with a high(er) cost of living due to housing and lack of access to local schools (read: expensive private international schools. Being a small island with a dense population, nearly everything is imported.
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