Portuguese Emigration Factbook 2025

Abstract

Factbook 2025 analyses data and estimates for 2024 or the last year available. As a rule, this data became available throughout 2025, although there are destination countries for which this availability only materialised in 2026. For this reason, the reference year for each value used is always duly noted throughout this report. Due to the right to leave the country of residence, as a rule there are no administrative records of exits (emigration) but only of entries (immigration). Estimating and characterising a country's emigration therefore requires compiling data on the entry and stay of emigrants in destination countries. The data that the Emigration Observatory collects, disseminates and analyses is therefore the data it obtains from the institutions responsible for immigration statistics in the countries where Portuguese emigration is destined. Data on inflows, often classed as ‘mirror statistics’ when used to measure emigration, do not correspond perfectly to data on outflows, as they also include remigration from previous destination countries. They are, however, the best proxy available for measuring emigration in flow terms. Censuses are usually ten-yearly, in some cases five-yearly, and are the most reliable method of counting a population because they cover the whole of those living and present in a country and not a sample of them. Annual figures on the number of immigrants residing in a given country are generally either demographic estimates calculated on the basis of population movement data, or estimates obtained through sample surveys. For almost all countries, the last censuses carried out were 2000/01 and 2010/11. Thus, the figures available between 2000/01 and 2010/11, or after that date, are generally estimates. Not all countries estimate annual data on the emigrant population by country of birth, so in these cases the only reliable data available on the stock of emigrants is the latest census data.