Bernardo Semblano is 22 years old and is pursuing his master’s degree in administration and management at the University of Aveiro. He is proud to be born and raised in Porto, Portugal.  

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I met him in Aveiro’s train station reading Game of Thrones in Portuguese, his mother language. He is tall with light skin and dark hair. He was wearing a blue and white button down with a navy sweatshirt, skinny jeans, and blue Adidas. He spoke English very well and with a confident tone.

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I wanted to understand what the future will be like for himself and Portuguese natives his age.  In terms of working abroad, he sees it as an opportunity. “You can always start from scratch.” He said that “For Portuguese people it’s kind of natural because from the 60’s 70’s like a lot of people immigrated so for us it’s normal like to go to France and Luxembourg. But I think it’s now a days um, people come our age that are a little more skeptical because like their grandparents or parents went away for some time…they usually go abroad if they don’t have any more options left”.

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Between 1886 and 1966, Portugal lost about 2.6 million people to emigration. The main motive for which was economic. Bernardo told us that in the future, he does not have a problem leaving Portugal to work in Luxembourg. He believes the internships in Portugal are not good and in general, the salaries of most jobs in Portugal do not equate to the number of years one has studied.

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He then described that that’s not the case anymore. Leaving one’s home country doesn’t necessarily equate to failure. Emigrating out of Portugal is becoming more and more normal especially for youth looking to find higher paying jobs.