Portuguese Migration to the UK Keeps Declining Following Brexit
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Emigration from Portugal to the UK has decreased in recent years, counting around 4,000 fewer Portuguese in the country.
- Two of the main reasons for the decline have been related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the UK leaving the European Union, with the latter indicating more restrictions related to the EU countries.
- The number of EU citizens moving to the UK has also dropped in recent years.
Fewer Portuguese nationals have moved to the United Kingdom in the last year, with the year-on-year migration dropping by 41 percent in September.
According to the Ministry of Labour, 5,434 Portuguese nationals registered with British social security between October 2022 and September 2023, which is 40.8 percent less than in the previous year when 9,024 Portuguese had registered with the authorities, as Social security registration is one of the ways how the UK calculates demographic flows.
The downward trend of Portuguese emigrating to the UK has been present since 2020, following the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the UK’s departure from the European Union, known as the Brexit phenomenon.
Portuguese are not the only nationality to be less interested in moving to the UK as the British Government revealed that only ten percent of 1.1 million all new registrations of non-British adult foreign citizens, were EU citizens. This share accounts for 110,000 new registrations and it is 50 per cent below September 2019 rates.
The latest data on the European Union Citizens Registration System, under the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS), show that 504,170 applications for residence permits were filed by Portuguese citizens until September 30, 2023.
Only one-quarter of 273,980 Portuguese received a permanent residence title, another 170,110 a provisional title [pre-settled status] and 52,800 had their processes rejected or invalidated.
The number of applications is not equivalent to the number of Portuguese residents in the United Kingdom, estimated at around 450,000, as some of the applications are repeated.
On the other hand, data from the Portugals’ Foreigner and Borders Service (SEF) show that 42,071 Brits became Portuguese citizens in 2021, becoming the second largest nationality group in the country.
The total number of Brits in Portugal in 2021 has peaked at 714,123, which is 7.8 percent more than in the previous year. This means that the British population in Portugal has been on the rise for six consecutive years, with some regions being more populated than others.
The Algarve and Lisbon are particularly popular, though cities such as Porto are also attracting interest from those considering relocating to Portugal from the UK.
Christina Hippisley, General Manager of the Portuguese Chamber in the UK
The UN data show that 1.3 million UK citizens are estimated to live in the EU around 2019. The majority of them are in Spain, followed by Ireland, France, Germany, and Italy is fifth.