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Portugal's jobless graduates flee to Africa and Brazil
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Thousands of young unemployed professionals are escaping Portugal's crippling economic crisis by finding jobs in former colonies, such as Brazil and Angola. The reversal of traditional migration patterns is fuelling talk of a "lost generation".
Natalia Santos has had enough. She occasionally laughs as she tells me her story but there is hardness in her olive-green eyes.
Nobody could accuse the 29-year-old teacher from Porto of lacking initiative. She has done more than most to find full-time work in Portugal.
Over the past six years she has applied to 362 schools, yet despite glowing references, she has never landed a job that lasted more than nine months.
Natalia has been forced to accept a string of short-term contracts on the minimum wage of around 500 euro per month.
In the fallow periods in-between, she helps her unemployed parents to grow fruit and vegetables.
Brain drain
Natalia also went to Poland for a year, on the Erasmus European volunteering scheme. She wanted to work - even if it was unpaid apart from expenses.
She hoped that the experience would help her back in Portugal, but it didn't. So she applied for a position in Ireland but then the economy there crashed.
Undeterred, Natalia tried another tack and went back to university to train as a special needs teacher.
After trying tirelessly to get a job in Portugal, Natalia is preparing to leave
But recent cuts in the education budget mean that most schools are now restricted to just one special needs teacher instead of four or five.
So no luck there either.
"I feel very frustrated sometimes and very disappointed," she says.
"But I won't give up. I'll go abroad because I am not going to wait for Portugal to give me something."
Natalia is about to join the growing brain drain.
One in 10 graduates now leaves the country, leading many to talking about Portugal's "lost generation".
"This is the biggest emigration wave since the 1960s," says Filipa Pinho of the government's newly established Emigration Observatory.
Dizzying growth
Portugal has traditionally exported some of its manpower - it has a diaspora around the world of three million. But in the past, it was blue-collar workers and villagers who left for a better life. Now it's the skilled and well-educated.
And if 50 years ago young Portuguese left to seek their fortune in richer parts of Europe, today they are packing their bags for booming Brazil, Angola and Mozambique.
It is a historic role reversal, because for decades Portugal lured immigrants from its former colonies in Latin America and Africa.
Read the rest here: [link to www.bbc.co.uk]
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