13 ms·

30% of Portuguese people between the ages of 15 and 39 have left the country

97 points by elsewhen 3y ago

4gotunameagain 3y ago
This is the effect "digital nomads" and other affluent gentrifiers have on a run down economy coupled with lack of political oversight and prioritisation of short term goals over long term ones. This is the same effect "golden visa" programs have, which flood the real estate markets with affluent people seeking a Schengen visa. This is corruption.
- mderazon 3y ago
  I think the mass exodus happened before the digital nomad trend. Specifically after the 2008 crisis. At least that's what I hear from Portuguese people
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  Typical PT populist reaction. It's not very hard to debunk, but this sentiment is very strong in some crowds in Lisboa & Porto. The foreigners, the nomads, usually well off people and golden visa people are what keeps the doors open on a lot of places that would simply disappear. I lived in some area where the people complained about the noise and misery, so the city council/mayor had places close earlier, gave out less permits etc; 3 years later the locals complained that so many nice smalls bars & restaurants & coffee shops disappeared and that there are only a few chains left. THEY weren't spending their days in these places; THEY weren't spending $100-200/day on food & drink; the nomads / tourists / expats were, so these places all closed. There is a lot wrong with this place (and every place I have lived by the way; nothing is perfect obviously), but getting rich folks in is not it. In my bar the American immigrants, who are currently the affluent gentrifiers here, spend vast amounts every day on food & drink, 365 days of the year, vs locals who have 1 coffee, if that, per week. I guess you know what's wrong when you lose it.
  - piloto_ciego 3y ago
    Man, I need to talk to you! Lol My wife and I have been thinking about trying to leave America for the last few years but it’s objectively difficult to find a place that’s conducive to moving. How do most people you interact with do it? Also, why are you on HackerNews of all places?
    - kraftverk_ 3y ago
      Philippines is a place to consider if you are an American also. Very good for expats or digital nomads. Speaking from experience
      - robocat 3y ago
        Are you taking about the Philippines being good to move to specifically for a couple? I'm not sure I would recommend it to single guys unless sex tourism is your thing. Although I suspect it is somewhat dependent on location. I went on a working holiday there (tourist visa - programming for my NZ company) as an ignorant guy for a month. It was hard to evade the sex workers approaching you. And I made an innocent mistake and booked a Best Western hotel when I arrived and the hotel happened to be in a dodgy sexwork area. Fascinating given I'm a bit naive, but I wouldn't recommend it except for the midget boxers. Later I met an Australian guy at a bar and he couldn't stop raving about how good a time he had at one of the towns near the American base. I really enjoyed the Philippines and the people, but the sex tourism wasn't appealing to me.
    - jIyajbe 3y ago
      Different poster here. My wife and I retired to Portugal (near Lisbon) about two years ago. I guess we're two of the "affluent gentrifiers". :-) In contrast, we met a 20-something U.S. couple in our language class, who moved here and are working. We all came here on the D7 visa program, not the Golden Visa. I'd be happy to give you some insights, but I'm not sure what you mean by "conducive to moving"; what sort of issues or difficulties are you having?
      - 3y ago
- bwb 3y ago
  I am curious, how many people were admitted to the golden visa program in the last 10 years? Does it really have a big impact?
  - forinti 3y ago
    It's not only that, many Europeans have houses in Portugal. Some have summer houses, others retire to a better climate. Many well-off South Americans move or retire in Portugal too, because of climate and safety. I guess it adds up. I can see a similar pattern in Brazil: nicer seaside towns are getting more expensive as the population ages and retirees search for nicer places to live.
    - bwb 3y ago
      Gotcha, do you have any numbers to demonstrate that? For example, I did a quick google search, and between 2012 to 2023 12,497 golden visas were granted in Portugal. It is highly unlikely that 12,000 families coming to Portugal is causing this? Right? Or what am I missing here? It seems like a "blame the immigrant" type thing when in fact it is a failure to build enough housing like almost every country except Austria and Singapore. Do you know what the D7 visa numbers are? Brazilian immigrants are also coming on other types of visas. One of my wife's doctors moved from Brazil and is one of the best rehab doctors we've ever had.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        > build enough housing like almost every country except Austria and Singapore What makes you say Austria builds enough housing? Have you looked at buying property prices in Austria? Way too high for the average income.
        bwb 3y ago
        Yep, they have done an amazing job: https://www.npr.org/local/305/2020/02/25/809315455/how-european-style-public-housing-could-help-solve-the-affordability-crisis https://www.npr.org/local/305/2020/02/25/809315455/how-europ... https://www.politico.eu/article/vienna-social-housing-architecture-austria-stigma/ https://www.politico.eu/article/vienna-social-housing-archit... https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/magazine/vienna-social-housing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/magazine/vienna-social-ho...
- fermisea 3y ago
  Sorry but we all left during the 2008-2015 era. If anything the recent economic boom that Lx and Porto are seeing are making it appealing to come back. Having said that, I agree that tourism and the golden visa have completely screwed up the housing market and that needs some fixing. But the fix should come with salaries catching up with the housing bubble and Portugal finally being able to compete H2H with the rest of Europe in terms of attracting talent
  - more_corn 3y ago
    I thought of a sort of interesting idea. In Mountain View the home of Google the city for some reason blocked housing construction for a decade. Meanwhile Google added 16k jobs to the city. The housing market in the whole area went batshit. What if the city had tried to permit 1 new housing start per new job? In Portugal what if every tech immigrant builds a house? Every unit of increased demand comes with a unit of increased supply. Theoretically that should flood the housing market with exactly as many new units as there are new immigrants. When we frame it as “driving up housing prices” we miss the simple idea of supply and demand. If supply always equals demand housing should stabilize.
    - somewhereoutth 3y ago
      Unfortunately the housing market is rather more complicated than simple supply and demand. Houses aren't lemons or bicycles. Where you sit on the 'available income for housing' curve determines the location and quality of the house/apartment/tent you live in. If lots of people with higher incomes appear, then you get moved down accordingly. If lots of tourists with higher propensity to spend on temporary accommodation appear, you get moved down accordingly. If lots of 'funny money' turns up looking for a place to be parked, you get moved down accordingly. Where people get distressed if is the location and quality that they can afford is not reasonable to them (either actually or by their perception). Building high quality well-located homes may help (if that is even possible), as everyone can 'move up' to the next rung on the quality/location ladder. However you may get induced demand, as the slight drop in prices brings more high earners/tourists/funny-money, in which case normal earners will not see the benefit. Alternatively, restricting high-earners/tourists/funny-money will move normal earners up the ladder, without having to lay a single brick. However there may be some economic downsides to that, depending on what exactly is proposed. For example banning AirBnB would likely be a large net positive to most European cities.
pjmlp 3y ago
Left after the dot-com crash, when getting IT jobs without being fired from the newly joined company was a matter of luck. Now like many emigrants, way beyond the typical age that HR sees as acceptable to still be an IC, instead of a manager for fresh graduate developers, which closes many doors. Then there is the work culture, that rather promotes connections than performance, managers that misunderstand the flex time concept to mean their employees get to work as many hours as they require them to do so (many times not officially counted for), small shops using pirated software or renewed trial versions, and many other issues. So eventually after tasting how good work experience feels like, in countries where everyone on the building gets the union deals, stuff gets sorted out when asked for, overtime is respected and paid accordingly, and many other improvements, it is hard to get back, after a certain point. Portugal is not alone in this, I get similar feedback from many southern Europe friends.
- purrcat259 3y ago
  This is very similar to the situation in Malta, where an EY survey showed around 90% of 18-25 year olds want to leave the island.
- fransje26 3y ago
  > [..] in countries where everyone on the building gets the union deals, stuff gets sorted out when asked for, overtime is respected and paid accordingly, and many other improvements [..] Where do we find this Walhalla? Would you mind sharing, from your experience, which countries are worth moving to? Thank you!
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavian countries. For example in Germany, if you are doing IT on an industry where the company has an agreement with IG Metal (Verdi, whatever), the deal is for all employees of the company, not just some of them.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      >Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavian countries. That's more to do with the type and quality of the company you work for rather than the labor laws of the country itslef. Plenty of body shops and overwork horror stories with terible managers coming from those countries as well if you happen to work for the "wrong" companies. It's just that economically performant economies like Switzerland, US, UK, Germany and Nordics tend to have more "good" companies than "wrong" companies, compared to southern/central/eastern Europe where it's moxtly bodyshops, consultancies and outsourcing.
lumost 3y ago
Id be curious to see how this pans out globally. Every news article I see points to younger workers getting punched in one manner or the other. It’s unsurprising that workers forced to work 50+ hours a week +commute time don’t have time to build social tethers to a location.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  It has already panned out: birth rates have cratered. And instead of looking at the obvious causes: economy and cliamter change are in the shitter, crap stressful jobs with long commutes that work you too hard and don't pay you enough to afford even a crappy overpriced property, people blame the youngsters for endulging in avocado toast, tinder, videogames and porn.
- Havoc 3y ago
  > how this pans out Social fabric collapses. At least in the western world. Many systems like pensions simple don’t work in the context of not enough stable families having babies. You can patch it with immigration but that gets you other social cohesion issues. All kinda scary
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    > Social fabric collapses. At least in the western world. > Many systems like pensions simple don’t work in the context of not enough stable families having babies. > You can patch it with immigration but that gets you other social cohesion issues See: Canada. But the other effect of trying to keep government pension running with immigration is that we ran out of housing for new people to move into here a couple of years ago. It's pretty much Battle Royale for housing while wages have stagnated at best.
  - ulfw 3y ago
    The Eastern world is no different. China and Japan have record low birth rates and declining populations. Same goes for other advanced nations.
anthk 3y ago
Going to Spain doesn't almost count...
yownie 3y ago
Just returned from Porto in December and talking to many many local Portuguese, the low wages and high cost of housing is usually one of the first things mentioned. One thing I had to discover after a bit of digging however was that inheritance law plays a largely undiscussed factor in the housing bubble currently happening. All housing is inherited in equal share by all descendants which usually goes exactly the way you'd expect when money and family mix, no one can agree on what to do so it sits unused / unmaintained until some rich dumb foreigner offers 2-Nx the market value and everyone can at least agree to profit. That and the previous junta and dictatorship before that means tons of property is sitting basically rotting in place.
- Wytwwww 3y ago
  > All housing is inherited in equal share by all descendants Isn't that's how it works pretty much everywhere these days unless there is an explicit will?
  - sobkas 3y ago
    > > All housing is inherited in equal share by all descendants > Isn't that's how it works pretty much everywhere these days unless there is an explicit will? No, in highly advanced countries we use the Highlander rule, "There shall be only one left", descendants fight eachother, cutting heads of loosers until only one remains and inherits the property. This is also the reason UK tries to ban knives, they are way to small to cut someones head with a single strike. We are humane after all.
    - belter 3y ago
      How is that working out for you? :-) Should you not be sharpening your knives right now?
- somewhereoutth 3y ago
  > foreigner offers 2-Nx or they realise they can make a killing on short term lets / AirBnb. A Portuguese acquaintance of mine proudly related how her family was converting her deceased grandmother's place into 2 (two!) AirBnBs - they'd even found a little old lady down the road to do the cleaning. The Portuguese are lovely but they can be completely oblivious to the world around them sometimes.
somewhereoutth 3y ago
And it will be the most adventurous/industrious/inventive/free-minded 30%. This has happened before, when many people went to the New World (Brazil) as the French loomed closer in the Peninsular War. Before that, the best and brightest of Portuguese society were wiped out by the earthquake of 1755.
nothingtosee 3y ago
Here's something for context (in portuguese, from the most well-respected newspaper): https://www.publico.pt/2024/01/20/sociedade/opiniao/mitos-mentiras-emigracao-portuguesa-2077490 https://www.publico.pt/2024/01/20/sociedade/opiniao/mitos-me... This newspaper piece breaksdown the numbers and shows that it's not that abnormal and that 30% is the top range of an estimate. Journalist and context at its best. Sadly, most media don't care about that and most people don't read the articles and some that do still don't understand what is written and what is not. Also, most media in Portugal is right-wing, from center-right to far-right. The owners profit with the misinformation.
fwn 3y ago
I'm currently spending the winter on a Portuguese island (working from "home", that is) and none of the neighbors I've seen are Portuguese. Even the waiters in the restaurants have British accents. My AirBnb host, who also currently lives in a second house on the property, is from Belgium. So, yes. There do seem to be some pretty strong demographic movements in Portugal.

97 points by elsewhen 3y ago

This is the effect "digital nomads" and other affluent gentrifiers have on a run down economy coupled with lack of political oversight and prioritisation of short term goals over long term ones. This is the same effect "golden visa" programs have, which flood the real estate markets with affluent people seeking a Schengen visa. This is corruption.

mderazon 3y ago
I think the mass exodus happened before the digital nomad trend. Specifically after the 2008 crisis. At least that's what I hear from Portuguese people
anonzzzies 3y ago
Typical PT populist reaction. It's not very hard to debunk, but this sentiment is very strong in some crowds in Lisboa & Porto. The foreigners, the nomads, usually well off people and golden visa people are what keeps the doors open on a lot of places that would simply disappear. I lived in some area where the people complained about the noise and misery, so the city council/mayor had places close earlier, gave out less permits etc; 3 years later the locals complained that so many nice smalls bars & restaurants & coffee shops disappeared and that there are only a few chains left. THEY weren't spending their days in these places; THEY weren't spending $100-200/day on food & drink; the nomads / tourists / expats were, so these places all closed. There is a lot wrong with this place (and every place I have lived by the way; nothing is perfect obviously), but getting rich folks in is not it. In my bar the American immigrants, who are currently the affluent gentrifiers here, spend vast amounts every day on food & drink, 365 days of the year, vs locals who have 1 coffee, if that, per week. I guess you know what's wrong when you lose it.
- piloto_ciego 3y ago
  Man, I need to talk to you! Lol My wife and I have been thinking about trying to leave America for the last few years but it’s objectively difficult to find a place that’s conducive to moving. How do most people you interact with do it? Also, why are you on HackerNews of all places?
  - kraftverk_ 3y ago
    Philippines is a place to consider if you are an American also. Very good for expats or digital nomads. Speaking from experience
    - robocat 3y ago
      Are you taking about the Philippines being good to move to specifically for a couple? I'm not sure I would recommend it to single guys unless sex tourism is your thing. Although I suspect it is somewhat dependent on location. I went on a working holiday there (tourist visa - programming for my NZ company) as an ignorant guy for a month. It was hard to evade the sex workers approaching you. And I made an innocent mistake and booked a Best Western hotel when I arrived and the hotel happened to be in a dodgy sexwork area. Fascinating given I'm a bit naive, but I wouldn't recommend it except for the midget boxers. Later I met an Australian guy at a bar and he couldn't stop raving about how good a time he had at one of the towns near the American base. I really enjoyed the Philippines and the people, but the sex tourism wasn't appealing to me.
  - jIyajbe 3y ago
    Different poster here. My wife and I retired to Portugal (near Lisbon) about two years ago. I guess we're two of the "affluent gentrifiers". :-) In contrast, we met a 20-something U.S. couple in our language class, who moved here and are working. We all came here on the D7 visa program, not the Golden Visa. I'd be happy to give you some insights, but I'm not sure what you mean by "conducive to moving"; what sort of issues or difficulties are you having?
    - 3y ago
bwb 3y ago
I am curious, how many people were admitted to the golden visa program in the last 10 years? Does it really have a big impact?
- forinti 3y ago
  It's not only that, many Europeans have houses in Portugal. Some have summer houses, others retire to a better climate. Many well-off South Americans move or retire in Portugal too, because of climate and safety. I guess it adds up. I can see a similar pattern in Brazil: nicer seaside towns are getting more expensive as the population ages and retirees search for nicer places to live.
  - bwb 3y ago
    Gotcha, do you have any numbers to demonstrate that? For example, I did a quick google search, and between 2012 to 2023 12,497 golden visas were granted in Portugal. It is highly unlikely that 12,000 families coming to Portugal is causing this? Right? Or what am I missing here? It seems like a "blame the immigrant" type thing when in fact it is a failure to build enough housing like almost every country except Austria and Singapore. Do you know what the D7 visa numbers are? Brazilian immigrants are also coming on other types of visas. One of my wife's doctors moved from Brazil and is one of the best rehab doctors we've ever had.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      > build enough housing like almost every country except Austria and Singapore What makes you say Austria builds enough housing? Have you looked at buying property prices in Austria? Way too high for the average income.
      - bwb 3y ago
        Yep, they have done an amazing job: https://www.npr.org/local/305/2020/02/25/809315455/how-european-style-public-housing-could-help-solve-the-affordability-crisis https://www.npr.org/local/305/2020/02/25/809315455/how-europ... https://www.politico.eu/article/vienna-social-housing-architecture-austria-stigma/ https://www.politico.eu/article/vienna-social-housing-archit... https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/magazine/vienna-social-housing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/magazine/vienna-social-ho...
fermisea 3y ago
Sorry but we all left during the 2008-2015 era. If anything the recent economic boom that Lx and Porto are seeing are making it appealing to come back. Having said that, I agree that tourism and the golden visa have completely screwed up the housing market and that needs some fixing. But the fix should come with salaries catching up with the housing bubble and Portugal finally being able to compete H2H with the rest of Europe in terms of attracting talent
- more_corn 3y ago
  I thought of a sort of interesting idea. In Mountain View the home of Google the city for some reason blocked housing construction for a decade. Meanwhile Google added 16k jobs to the city. The housing market in the whole area went batshit. What if the city had tried to permit 1 new housing start per new job? In Portugal what if every tech immigrant builds a house? Every unit of increased demand comes with a unit of increased supply. Theoretically that should flood the housing market with exactly as many new units as there are new immigrants. When we frame it as “driving up housing prices” we miss the simple idea of supply and demand. If supply always equals demand housing should stabilize.
  - somewhereoutth 3y ago
    Unfortunately the housing market is rather more complicated than simple supply and demand. Houses aren't lemons or bicycles. Where you sit on the 'available income for housing' curve determines the location and quality of the house/apartment/tent you live in. If lots of people with higher incomes appear, then you get moved down accordingly. If lots of tourists with higher propensity to spend on temporary accommodation appear, you get moved down accordingly. If lots of 'funny money' turns up looking for a place to be parked, you get moved down accordingly. Where people get distressed if is the location and quality that they can afford is not reasonable to them (either actually or by their perception). Building high quality well-located homes may help (if that is even possible), as everyone can 'move up' to the next rung on the quality/location ladder. However you may get induced demand, as the slight drop in prices brings more high earners/tourists/funny-money, in which case normal earners will not see the benefit. Alternatively, restricting high-earners/tourists/funny-money will move normal earners up the ladder, without having to lay a single brick. However there may be some economic downsides to that, depending on what exactly is proposed. For example banning AirBnB would likely be a large net positive to most European cities.

pjmlp 3y ago

Left after the dot-com crash, when getting IT jobs without being fired from the newly joined company was a matter of luck. Now like many emigrants, way beyond the typical age that HR sees as acceptable to still be an IC, instead of a manager for fresh graduate developers, which closes many doors. Then there is the work culture, that rather promotes connections than performance, managers that misunderstand the flex time concept to mean their employees get to work as many hours as they require them to do so (many times not officially counted for), small shops using pirated software or renewed trial versions, and many other issues. So eventually after tasting how good work experience feels like, in countries where everyone on the building gets the union deals, stuff gets sorted out when asked for, overtime is respected and paid accordingly, and many other improvements, it is hard to get back, after a certain point. Portugal is not alone in this, I get similar feedback from many southern Europe friends.

purrcat259 3y ago
This is very similar to the situation in Malta, where an EY survey showed around 90% of 18-25 year olds want to leave the island.
fransje26 3y ago
> [..] in countries where everyone on the building gets the union deals, stuff gets sorted out when asked for, overtime is respected and paid accordingly, and many other improvements [..] Where do we find this Walhalla? Would you mind sharing, from your experience, which countries are worth moving to? Thank you!
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavian countries. For example in Germany, if you are doing IT on an industry where the company has an agreement with IG Metal (Verdi, whatever), the deal is for all employees of the company, not just some of them.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavian countries. That's more to do with the type and quality of the company you work for rather than the labor laws of the country itslef. Plenty of body shops and overwork horror stories with terible managers coming from those countries as well if you happen to work for the "wrong" companies. It's just that economically performant economies like Switzerland, US, UK, Germany and Nordics tend to have more "good" companies than "wrong" companies, compared to southern/central/eastern Europe where it's moxtly bodyshops, consultancies and outsourcing.

lumost 3y ago

Id be curious to see how this pans out globally. Every news article I see points to younger workers getting punched in one manner or the other. It’s unsurprising that workers forced to work 50+ hours a week +commute time don’t have time to build social tethers to a location.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
It has already panned out: birth rates have cratered. And instead of looking at the obvious causes: economy and cliamter change are in the shitter, crap stressful jobs with long commutes that work you too hard and don't pay you enough to afford even a crappy overpriced property, people blame the youngsters for endulging in avocado toast, tinder, videogames and porn.
Havoc 3y ago
> how this pans out Social fabric collapses. At least in the western world. Many systems like pensions simple don’t work in the context of not enough stable families having babies. You can patch it with immigration but that gets you other social cohesion issues. All kinda scary
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  > Social fabric collapses. At least in the western world. > Many systems like pensions simple don’t work in the context of not enough stable families having babies. > You can patch it with immigration but that gets you other social cohesion issues See: Canada. But the other effect of trying to keep government pension running with immigration is that we ran out of housing for new people to move into here a couple of years ago. It's pretty much Battle Royale for housing while wages have stagnated at best.
- ulfw 3y ago
  The Eastern world is no different. China and Japan have record low birth rates and declining populations. Same goes for other advanced nations.

anthk 3y ago

Going to Spain doesn't almost count...

yownie 3y ago

Just returned from Porto in December and talking to many many local Portuguese, the low wages and high cost of housing is usually one of the first things mentioned. One thing I had to discover after a bit of digging however was that inheritance law plays a largely undiscussed factor in the housing bubble currently happening. All housing is inherited in equal share by all descendants which usually goes exactly the way you'd expect when money and family mix, no one can agree on what to do so it sits unused / unmaintained until some rich dumb foreigner offers 2-Nx the market value and everyone can at least agree to profit. That and the previous junta and dictatorship before that means tons of property is sitting basically rotting in place.

Wytwwww 3y ago
> All housing is inherited in equal share by all descendants Isn't that's how it works pretty much everywhere these days unless there is an explicit will?
- sobkas 3y ago
  > > All housing is inherited in equal share by all descendants > Isn't that's how it works pretty much everywhere these days unless there is an explicit will? No, in highly advanced countries we use the Highlander rule, "There shall be only one left", descendants fight eachother, cutting heads of loosers until only one remains and inherits the property. This is also the reason UK tries to ban knives, they are way to small to cut someones head with a single strike. We are humane after all.
  - belter 3y ago
    How is that working out for you? :-) Should you not be sharpening your knives right now?
somewhereoutth 3y ago
> foreigner offers 2-Nx or they realise they can make a killing on short term lets / AirBnb. A Portuguese acquaintance of mine proudly related how her family was converting her deceased grandmother's place into 2 (two!) AirBnBs - they'd even found a little old lady down the road to do the cleaning. The Portuguese are lovely but they can be completely oblivious to the world around them sometimes.

somewhereoutth 3y ago

And it will be the most adventurous/industrious/inventive/free-minded 30%. This has happened before, when many people went to the New World (Brazil) as the French loomed closer in the Peninsular War. Before that, the best and brightest of Portuguese society were wiped out by the earthquake of 1755.

nothingtosee 3y ago

Here's something for context (in portuguese, from the most well-respected newspaper): https://www.publico.pt/2024/01/20/sociedade/opiniao/mitos-mentiras-emigracao-portuguesa-2077490 https://www.publico.pt/2024/01/20/sociedade/opiniao/mitos-me... This newspaper piece breaksdown the numbers and shows that it's not that abnormal and that 30% is the top range of an estimate. Journalist and context at its best. Sadly, most media don't care about that and most people don't read the articles and some that do still don't understand what is written and what is not. Also, most media in Portugal is right-wing, from center-right to far-right. The owners profit with the misinformation.

fwn 3y ago

I'm currently spending the winter on a Portuguese island (working from "home", that is) and none of the neighbors I've seen are Portuguese. Even the waiters in the restaurants have British accents. My AirBnb host, who also currently lives in a second house on the property, is from Belgium. So, yes. There do seem to be some pretty strong demographic movements in Portugal.