Portuguese Emigrant Entrepreneurship

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Presentation Note

The current work, entitled Portuguese Emigrant Entrepreneurship in London, Andorra, Nice and Monaco, inscribes itself in an Investigation Project developped by the CEPESE – Centro de Estudos da População, Economia e Sociedade -, approved and funded in a large part by the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e para a Tecnologia -, entitled Portuguese Emigrant Entrepreneurship in Andorra, London, Nice and Monaco and coordinated by Prof. Doctor Maria Ortelinda Barros Gonçalves.

In the scope of the Portuguese emigration to Europe, developed in the last decades, and which gained particular intensity since 2008 due to the violent world crisis which severely affected Portugal, we looked for, as the title itself of this Project suggests, an approach to such phenomenon, not in its global dimension – migratory flows, intensity, explanatory factors, geographic distribution, etc. –, furthermore detecting, in the universe of the Portuguese who abandoned the Country, those who, in certain territories, overcome the status of workers for others, becoming entrepreneurs, i.e., economic agents who identify themselves with the entrepreneurs, or businessmen, who have accepted the risk, launching themselves individually or collectively, in an enterprise creation, or with the objective of exploiting a certain branch of business offering, thus, to the market certain commodities or services.

We deal with a first exploration to a little approached theme, treated until this moment by the scientific community, but which matters to deepen in the sense of being known the individual courses of those who were distinguished in the scope of the Portuguese communities of emigrants, rejecting the mediocrity and resignation and, on the contrary, exploiting the open opportunities in the territories where they installed themselves, working as self-employees, generating riches, and becoming, this way, motor elements of the economic development of the countries which welcomed them. ← 9 | 10 →

Certain that Prof. Doctor Ortelinda Barros will not stop, in the next future, enlarging this attractive theme, I want to thank and congratulate her, on behalf of CEPESE, for having coordinated this Project.

Fernando de Sousa

(President of CEPESE)

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Preface

The Project of Investigation Portuguese emigrant entrepreneurship in Andorra, London, Nice and Monaco, coordinated by Doctor Ortelinda Barros, welcomed by the Center for the Studies of Population, Economy and Society, and funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology, constitutes a good example of cooperation between investigators of several research centers and the advantages which result from it.

The convergence of interests around the Portuguese emigration phenomenon and of its recent particularities in differenced geographic contexts has allowed for a more detailed knowledge of one of the characteristics of the Portuguese emigrant – his capability of initiative – and his adaptation to the times of changes which enliven the European society.

Around this theme, the team of investigators who participate in this Project present us the results of their work, which in this written version covers:

− the update of the State of Art in its historical and geographical, economic, ethnic and social dimensions, in the context of the European Union and of their countries of work;

− a characterization of the dominant economies in the territories analyzed;

− data of a detailed investigation on the situation registered in each of the contexts of the study. These results are based in a choice with criterion of the methodology of investigation, detailing the instruments and the proceedings of gathering, the treatment of the data, the lecture and the conclusions of the work realized.

The different contributions evaluated in the Seminary of presentation of final results of this Project suggest that the theme in appreciation, far from being concluded, aims for its continuity and deepening in new ← 11 | 12 → emigration contexts and in situations already distinct of those that preside to the realization of the first phase of this Project. That stresses the interest and relevance of the study of this old “structural constant” of the Portuguese society and its adaptation to the times of change and the forced globalization of the international migrations.

Jorge Carvalho Arroteia

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Introduction

“The adversity has the effect of awakening talents which in
prosper circumstances would have remained dormant”.
Quotation attributed to Horace
(roman poet).

Today, as in the past, the population migrations are intimately connected to economic factors, namely of subsistence. In reality, this motivation, previous to the the sedentary process of Man, entangles itself with the History of Mankind itself, which leads us to suggest that it seems to exist a primitive and innate facet of the human being, which makes him go forward, many times into the unknown, whenever his survival is or was at stake. To that extent, we can state that the human being is an emigrant by his nature.

In the current times, never seemed so pressing the study and mainly understanding of the true impacts of migrations, not just from the viewpoint of the migrant subject, but also from the viewpoint of the receiving territories. We speak of territories, and not in communities or States, as it is to assess whether the solidary matrix which founded the European project shall or shall not overlap the numerous political, economic, regional and even ideological interests of each Member State.

At the moment in which we write this work, thousands of migrants find themselves at the doors of Europe (many of them fallen in the meshes of the people trafficking networks) and part of them march to an announced death, either drowned or suffocated on decks of small crafts more than overcrowded, on trying to cross the Mediterranean.

In parallel, we observe an Europe which considers slowly and hesitantly what it can (or wishes) to do to welcome growing waves of people ready to die on that one which in other times was a mare nostrum approaching people and cultures. As if it was not enough, we assist to the construction of walls in concrete and fences of barbed wire within the Schengen space. Strange Europe, this one. ← 13 | 14 →

The current book, in spite of not outcropping the migrations of the present – as they are not a part of our defined objectives, which require a chronologic detachment –, does not do without having in mind this pragmatic and current sense of the motivations which lead the Portuguese emigrants to emigrate. In this sense, it is important never to take or of its context the economic-social dimension as well as the political-ideological factors, which have certainly contributed to our Diaspora and, – as Fernando Rosas describes (1998, p. 373) –, to the “emptying” of our country in terms of population.

Enunciated the worrying conjuncture of macro frame in which all the research has been unfolding, all research realized between 2012 and 2015, it is relevant to let the reader know the historical-geographical scenarios and also the individual characteristics of our emigrants who have been an object of study.

So, this book which now is consubstantiated, aims, first of all, knowing and interpreting particular cases of Portuguese emigrant entrepreneurs established in specific territories of Europe, concretely in Andorra, in London and in the region of the Maritime French Alps (Nice and Monaco).

In effect, more than approaching emigration in general, we focus our action on those who have effectively become entrepreneurs, either through the creation of businesses in individual name, or through the participation in commercial societies. Currently, the term “entrepreneurship” seems to have become a little banal by the political power, maybe for the tacit recognition the initiatives of the entrepreneur are those that mitigate, not seldom, the numerous problems of the jobless increase that the States, per se, cannot reverse.

In what concerns the emigrants, entrepreneurship seems to be one of the most pronounced facets of the subject who breaches a status quo, with he does not identify himself with, does not wish or, simply, does not allow his survival. To that extent, the act of migrating is, by itself, also an action that goes through the verification of the current difficulties and the identification of potentialities in another territory. Such opportunities, when worked, will be able to create riches in the future or, as economists would say, they will be able to create “added value”. ← 14 | 15 → Even so, only some emigrants do achieve in materializing this entrepreneur spirit in a space, an enterprise and in a commercial business. It is only on these, as we already have referred, that we shall look into often throughout the various chapters of this book.