The small auditorium of the Municipal Theater of Portimão (Tempo) was filled of multiculturalism, on Friday, September 30, with a seminar dedicated to reflection on immigration.
In the audience were people from African countries, Eastern Europe or Brazil, who listened and participated in the debate on issues that are close to them, such as the difficulties of finding a job or being an entrepreneur, or returning to the country of origin.
With more than 2009 foreigners living in Portimão and “an economic crisis that surprised everyone, we thought it was necessary to reflect on how immigrants are experiencing issues such as employability”, began by explaining Ana Figueiredo, president of the Junta de Parish of Portimão, organizer of the seminar and which is the first Junta in the Algarve region with a Local Support Center for the Integration of Immigrants (CLAII), inaugurated in XNUMX.
For this reason, the municipality developed the seminar entitled “Immigration and Contemporary Citizenship” and invited specialists who debated two major themes: “Immigration, crisis and entrepreneurship” and “Immigrants between return, regulation and resistance”.
One of the highlights of the seminar was the story of life stories told in the first person, which began with the presentation of a video that compiled the testimonies of immigrants who chose the Algarve as their host region and, later, with two immigrants telling on-site visit your experience.
Dressed up in a turban and a bright yellow tunic, Rocky Ndaw, a 44-year-old Senegalese, who has developed a business selling local crafts, accessories (bracelets, yarn) and tererê (braids), took the stage to tell your adventure in Portugal.
The immigrant revealed to participants her path from the time she decided to leave Senegal until she became a successful businesswoman and set up a stand at the Aqua Portimão shopping centre. Encouraging a few laughs from the audience who listened to her, the Senegalese told some adventures that had happened to her in recent years as an immigrant, but also the problems and barriers she had to overcome.
«I worked cleaning at PT and at night I was at Picoas [in Lisbon], but the money wasn't enough for everything. I had to help the family, get together and have money for myself. I accumulated three jobs and hardly slept. One day I went to the doctor and he told me to stop”, he recalled. "He told me he wasn't right in the head anymore."
It was at that time that he visited Portimão and saw that it was a good place to start the braiding business. He started his "business" making braids on the bench in the garden, but today he already has a business, in partnership with his daughters.
It was women entrepreneurs who led Frederica Rodrigues, from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), to present a study at this seminar, which took nine months to prepare.
The conclusions reached by this study are that women entrepreneurs are, on average, between 35 and 44 years old, have secondary and professional education, have no nationality, have acquired professional experience in the country, and most of them want to stay in Portugal. The questionnaires were carried out to 450 people from Braga, Porto, Aveiro, Lisbon, Setúbal and Faro.
According to Frederica Rodrigues, “the majority opened a business because of the desire for independence, for personal fulfillment, and the increase in income only appears as the third reason to create a business. Other women opened out of necessity, due to lack of employment».
They faced, however, difficulties such as the lack of equity capital and difficult access to banking. Therefore, many chose to open small businesses that do not involve borrowing, such as in the areas of beauty, domestic support services (sewing, laundry, cleaning), commerce and hotels and restaurants.
Rocky is an example of an enterprising woman like those who participated in the study, but not all immigrants can say the same.
The Algarve, after Lisbon and Vale do Tejo, is the second region in the country that has suffered the largest increase in immigrants in the last five years, but with the economic crisis and the fall in civil construction, which have increased in recent years , the problems of lack of work also began.
The data that Madalena Feu, director of the Portimão Employment Center, presented at the seminar leave no room for doubt. Taking into account the information registered at that centre, which covers the municipalities of Portimão, Silves, Lagoa and Monchique, on immigrants from tertiary countries, legalized and authorized to work in Portugal, the number of registered unemployed increased by 57 percent, between 2005 and 2009.
«Many people came here due to the lack of work or working conditions in their country, as the information circulated that Portugal was a country where life and climate were good, where it was easy to obtain nationality and legalization for the work and where wages were high», explained Madalena Feu.
Most immigrants were people from poor countries, with disadvantaged situations, who wanted to obtain quick incomes, through working with conditions, to improve their lives and that of their families, and had intentions of staying for a short time.
If in 2005 there were 631 immigrants registered at the Portimão Employment Center, in 2009 the bar reached 1381. However, in 2010 a decrease was already felt, according to Madalena Feu, in a trend that should continue in 2011.
Coming from Eastern Europe, Brazil and African countries, these immigrants represent, for the most part, low-skilled labor, who accept precarious work, with low wages and poor conditions, jobs refused by national workers.
In general, these are short-term unemployed, due to the pressure of finding work, often accumulating more than one job. "However, there are now long-term unemployed immigrants because of the crisis," said Madalena Feu. What leads these people to consider whether it would not be better to return to their country or to immigrate to another part of the European Union, where there is not so much difficulty.
As for gender, in 2005, there were more women registered, a trend that is reversed in 2011 (numbers up to August), with 65 percent of men among the registered unemployed immigrants. The crisis in civil construction will have been one of the great motivators of this reality.
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