Ana Sequeria is walking back after having just given a tour of Aveiro’s salt mills to young American college students. The gentle wind blows her hair back as she returns to the museum center.

The Aveiro Museum Tour Guide has watched her family and friends slowly leave Portugal due to a declining economy.  

This is a trend she has refused to follow. Instead, she sees her future in Portugal, where she worries the patterns of people leaving will affect the future of the country.

As an undergraduate student, she studied archaeology, then obtained a masters in geology for museum studies. For four years she studied in England. Although she may have loved it, the gloomy weather brought her sadness and she soon missed home.

 

“England is quite dark,” she said.

Portugal’s sun and vibrant energy are what brought her back.

 

“Week after you week you feel tired and sad, we are used to more sun in Portugal.”

After moving back, she got the job at the Aveiro museum with a long term contract. She’s watched her colleagues find new jobs outside of Portugal, moving to places such as Sweden, England, Dubai, and Luxembourg.

 

Even when the crisis came, she wasn’t worried about having to leave, as she did not have to search for another job.

“I am lucky,” she says describing her stable job in Portugal. “My Salary is not very high, but enough to live comfortably.”

There were two periods where emigration out of Portugal was at its highest according to Sequeria.

The first was her grandparents and some of her parents’ generation that moved elsewhere.  During that time, Portugal was run by a dictatorship where there was little social mobility. If you were born in a farmer’s family, you had to be a farmer. There was no room to choose another occupation.

“If you wanted something different, you had to get out,” she says, describing why her grandparents moved to the United States.

According to Sequeria, the second pattern of emigration from Portugal happened around 2012 when young people moved out of the country. She says that these young people were highly qualified with master’s degrees. In Portugal, there weren’t enough high paying or stable jobs for these professionals.

A friend of Sequerias was a teacher in Portugal. She eventually moved to Sweden because she was being continuously moved from job to job while in Portugal.

“In Sweden, she has a permanent position now, which is safer.”

Sequeria comes from the younger generation. She has watched many of her colleagues move out of the country.

Portugal’s future is in the hands of the young people, like Sequeria.

“Some of them are not coming back, so it’s going to be a problem in the future.”