From a negative net migration for decades, Portugal shifted to an immigration country in the end of the 20th century. The first immigration flows were dominated by unqualified workers, mainly coming from African Portuguese Speaking countries (PALOP) that were former colonies. There are reports of some highly skilled immigrants that arrived in the 1990s, mainly from Brazilian and EU origin. The first time that Portugal truly started to face the challenge of receiving immigrants with higher education that were overqualified for the activities they were performing in the labour market was in the beginning of the 21st century with the arrival of Eastern Europeans. 

The Portuguese experience with different immigrant flows in the past three decades highlighted the existence of three different groups of highly skilled immigrants: the first of highly qualified immigrants at entrance to Portugal; the second composed by immigrants acknowledged as highly skilled after a process of equivalences and/or recognition of qualifications or after achieving a higher education in the Portuguese education system; and finally a third with potential highly skilled immigrants. 

The characteristics and specific needs of each group lead to challenges in integration policies and in the protection of rights, pressuring for the definition of new legislative pieces and the opening of new support services and programmes. The report highlights the developments of the past ten years in the policies (e.g. recognition of qualifications, action plans for immigrant integration) and measures (e.g. support offices to highly qualified immigrants; special programmes for the combat of overqualification of immigrants in needing professions such as the health sector) defined, targeting highly qualified immigrants in Portugal. Although Portugal did not yet transpose the EU Blue Card directive, since 2007 the Portuguese Immigration Act has foreseen two special legal titles for highly qualified immigrants’ entrance. Furthermore, several bilateral agreements have been defined between Portugal and other countries to either answer to specific needs of the Portuguese labour market (e.g. to bring health professionals) or to consolidate friendship and cooperation relations (e.g. arrival of students and professionals for additional training). 

As highlighted in the report, the challenges and vulnerabilities that highly qualified immigrants face in Portugal are mainly linked to whether immigrants’ qualifications are being used or not in the labour market, and/or being officially recognised or not. Hence, the integration needs and problems of the highly qualified immigrants in the country are characterised by four possible ideal types of highly skilled immigrants: (A) immigrants that have their equivalences recognised and are using them in the labour market; (B) immigrants that are working in higher education professions although their qualifications were not officially recognised; (C) immigrants that although had their qualifications recognised in Portugal are not using their education in the job they have; and (D) highly qualified immigrants that do not have both the recognition of qualifications and the use of them in the labour market. 

The differences of these four Ideal types raise different opportunities, challenges and integration needs for the immigrants. As discussed in the report, although the legal framework that defines the possibilities of the official recognition process of qualifications and equivalences is very important; it is furthermore relevant to analyse how the country is effectively using immigrants’ skills in the labour market (or, in contrast, is wasting human capital gathered with no costs to the country) and/or if it attracts highly skilled immigrants. 

The report concludes with a discussion on whether Portugal will be an attractive country to highly qualified immigrants in the future, to answer to the demand of certain professional sectors, when it is presently facing the emigration of Portuguese professionals that are unemployed due to, among other reasons, the fragile economic situation of the country