Introduction
I. The study in context
Family
reunification and the right to asylum are practically the only legal
gateways into the European Union. More than three-quarters of the
annual inflow comprise spouses, children and other relatives.
However, as an instrument for immigration regulation, family
reunification is a relatively recent arrival to the Western European
policy agenda.
Because
of the generally tight restrictions on immigration into the EU, many
initially temporary migrants are settling more permanently and,
consequently, seeking to have their families join them.
In
Portugal, immigration remains predominantly based upon labour
immigration and not on family reunification. However, similar to
that which can be observed in traditional immigration countries,
family reunification will grow increasingly more important with
time.
In this
context, the EU and the governments of its member-states have paid
increasingly more attention to the regulation of family
reunification and have worked towards the standardisation of these
policies across the EU. The purpose of this standardisation is,
without questioning the right to the protection of one’s family laid
down by the Geneva Convention, to strengthen the mechanisms that
serve to control family reunification, by imposing more or less
strict definitions of ‘family’ and ‘family reunification’.
Given
the multidimensionality of the family reunification issue and
immigration in Portugal, this study includes the following
objectives:
1.
An evaluation of the size and character of the family
reunification process in Portugal (effective reunification) by type
of reunification (spouse, children, parents and other relatives) and
by their incidence among different groups of immigrants;
2.
An analysis of family reunification’s prospects in the
future, by modelling the specific tendencies displayed by each
community and where they are situated in the migratory process;
3.
An analysis of family reunification’s demographic and
economic (fundamentally at the labour market level) impacts, as well
as regional asymmetries, inter-ethnic relations and social conflict
connected to it.
Confronted
by significant modern transformations in family structure, which
involves more frequent processes of separation and re-composition,
as well as by systems of family organisation that differ from the
“European model”, the so-called nuclear family loses its some of its
relevance. Therefore, this study adopts a more flexible concept of
family that takes into account elements such as financial, emotional
and psychological dependency in order to better encompass new family
situations.
Contrary
to the broader definition of family adopted here, Portuguese law
(Decree-Law no. 34/2003 of 25 February) has a much stricter
interpretation of which family members are eligible to enter the
country under family reunification legislation and who may not.
II. Family reunification and
immigrants’ integration in their host societies: Providing a
backdrop
A
family, regardless of whether it comprises immigrants or not, is the
most basic and universal unit of cultural, social and economic
production and reproduction. At its best, it plays a fundamental
role in the successful integration of its members and functions as a
support network for them. Many immigrants are at first deprived of
this support structure, having left their families behind in their
country of origin. Some are fortunate enough to reunite with their
families in the receiving country. Others, whose families do not fit
the nuclear norm, are left to rebuild their families with the
members that do succeed in joining them.
Immigrant
families face a host of challenges in reassembling and
re-establishing themselves both as a family unit and as individuals
within a family in a new country. Both their country of origin and
their receiving country’s cultural and socio-economic
characteristics, values and predispositions play fundamental roles
in defining their ability to migrate in the first place and, later
on, their level of integration and their access to the labour
market, educational system, health care, social services, housing
and citizenship wherever they may choose to settle.
While
immigrant families face the same issues as autochthonous ones, they
also have specific needs that are not always easily discernible or
may not be treatable with the same types of solutions for
autochthonous families. “[R]eunified
families go through a series of difficulties that may over-lap into
other categories (immigrants, foreigners, families), but which in
their entirety, are specific only to the category of reunified
families”
(Psychoanalytic
Institute for Social Research (2001: 65).[1]
Reduced
or non-existent family and social networks, language barriers and
learning difficulties, conflicting cultural values and freedoms,
revised gender norms and power within families, discrimination in
the housing and labour markets, precarious and low-paid work, and
specific health risks and needs – while not particularities merely
of immigrant families – do confront them disproportionately. In
turn, their experiences require special attention and awareness on
behalf of those that work with immigrant families and those that are
in positions to make decisions about them.
III. Immigration in Portugal: From
colonial history to international labour recruitment and
distribution networks
Portugal’s
experience as an immigration country remains a relatively recent
phenomenon, in step with the internationalisation of the Portuguese
economy and the country’s integration in the European Union.
Traditionally an emigration country, it was only by the mid-1970s
that Portugal passed from being a labour source for the more
developed parts of Europe to welcoming foreign workers itself. Similar to that which took
place in other Southern European countries in the last quarter of
the 20th century, Portugal began to record a remarkable
rise in immigration from Portuguese-speaking African countries
(PALOPs) and Brazil and, more recently, from Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union.
Immigrants
are clearly attracted to and settle in the country’s largest urban
areas. In 2001, for example, 55.5% of all immigrants living in
Portugal were located in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. However, the
most significant change to immigrants’ geographical distribution
corresponds to the newest wave of migrants and their propensity to
be dispersed more widely throughout the country, in function with
the existing employment opportunities available in each region and
the increasing internationalisation of the labour market, even in
peripheral regions, corresponding to processes of globalisation
taking root and the more deeply-felt effects caused by an ageing
population.
The
concentration of immigrants in metropolitan areas is particularly
apparent in the case of Portuguese-speaking African (PALOP)
immigrants, evidenced by the fact that 81% live in the Lisbon
Metropolitan Area (LMA) and in the Setúbal Peninsula. This group is
predominantly composed of low-skilled labour migrants with little
formal education and is structured by interpersonal networks.
Brazilians
are much less concentrated in the LMA and are represented in
significant numbers along the northern coastal region (especially in
the Porto Metropolitan Area) and, to a lesser extent, in the Algarve
in southern Portugal. This may have to do with Brazilians’ knowledge
of Northern Portugal, given the important role it played in the past
as a source of Portuguese emigration to Brazil.
Eastern
European immigrants portray a settlement pattern that is distinct
from that of their African and Brazilian counterparts. The
difference corresponds to their increasingly larger numbers in areas
adjacent to the LMA, namely in the rural and agricultural areas of
the Ribatejo, Oeste and Alentejo, and in the industrial areas along
the northern and central coasts.
The
expansion of international labour recruitment for Portugal can be
seen in the growth of some Asian (China, India and Pakistan) and
North African (Moroccan) communities.
IV.
Reunifying
families: A motive for immigration and its relevance to demographic
and family structures
This
chapter includes a general sketch of how immigration to Portugal is
motivated by family reunification processes, associated with changes
in family structures and in the demographic behaviour of families
themselves. Here we seek to analyse the behaviour of the main groups
of foreigners settled in Portugal relative to their use of the
family reunification process to facilitate their immigration to
Portugal. We also examine to what extent the indicators on
demographic structures (i.e., sex and age) and on family members
themselves provide information as to the potential for family
reunification and the effects induced by it, such as the growth in
numbers of women and children or the need for adequate housing. We,
furthermore, present a brief perspective on the meaning (both direct
and indirect) of family reunification on demographic behaviours such
as marriage and reproduction.
The
importance of family (and of group of origin) at the start of the
migratory process and as a source of support in the different phases
of this process does not impede the development of spatial and
temporal separations between its members, particularly because
immigration involves a series of phases. As such, members of a
household do not always move together all at once.
It is
useful to understand how different groups of immigrants with various
characteristics and in different phases of the migratory process in
Portugal have made use of family reunification. Three distinct
relationships to family reunification can be identified:
·
Portuguese-speaking
African (PALOP) immigrants already at a later migratory phase
experienced significant growth in the number of immigrant entries
associated with family reunification between 1999-2002. Of this
group, approximately one-third of new arrivals come because of
family reunification, indicating that, with the more advanced
migratory process, the group is increasingly less dominated by
pioneering male immigrants but rather by males and females of
different ages;
·
Asians,
particularly the Chinese and Indian communities, statistically make
significant use of the family reunification instrument (in 2002),
which illustrates their more established presence (most evident in
the case of the small Indian community) and their migratory
strategies that appear to involve adult members of the nuclear
family moving to Portugal within a relatively short period of
time;
·
‘Other Europeans’ (non-EU nationals), principally
composed by Eastern European immigrants, and Brazilians have much
lower levels of immigration induced by family reunification than the
two examples above. This situation stems from the recent character
of the presence of these groups in Portugal (best illustrated by the
Eastern European community) and serves to accentuate the importance
of labour immigration for them. They are in a ‘pre-family
reunification’ phase. In spite of some similarities in their
migration processes, each group is distinct. Eastern Europeans
display a greater conformity with the classic migration model, with
a pre-dominantly male population, while Brazilians display a more
balanced gender distribution. The greater presence of women in the
Brazilian case indicates that they come outside of the family
context and of the more classic reunification processes.
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