Portuguese emigrate in droves as crisis bites FEATURE 06/02/2011

Portuguese emigrate in droves as crisis bites

FEATURE

06/02/2011
LISBON — Following the footsteps of their grandparents five decades earlier, thousands of unemployed Portuguese youth, in many cases armed with university degrees, are packing their bags and moving abroad to escape the country’s economic crisis.

Up until February Marlene and Pedro Frazao Pinheiro, both of them 25, lived in Entrocamento in the center of Portugal where they worked as nurses.

She had a fixed-term contract at a private company; he worked in the public sector, but only part-time and without a contract.

“We were ‘precarious’ workers as they say,” Marlene told AFP by telephone from Northampton about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of London where they now live..... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20110602com7.html