Mediterranean Mobilities by Maria Paradiso

Author:Maria Paradiso
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Being a labour-motivated migration, most Moroccans living in Portugal are of working age (61.9% in the 24–44 age bracket5) and obtain their income from work (59.8%)6 in the areas of wholesale and retail trade (32%), agriculture and fisheries (17.8%), hotels, restaurants and cafés (13.8%), and construction (13.4%). Close to one-third (32.5%) perform non-skilled jobs as peddlers, cleaners, agricultural labourers and fishermen, whereas 22.9% of the jobs fit into the category of personal services and sales people mostly as shop assistants, cooks and waiters. More than one quarter (27.0%) of Moroccans counted in the 2011 Census stated they held no formal schooling and 48.9% had between four and nine years of education. As explored later in this chapter, the low levels of formal education combined with specificities of some forms of employment constrain the diversity of friendship networks.

According to the Aliens and Borders Office, in 2016 the main geographic concentrations corresponded to the principal regions of economic activity, i.e. the Algarve (33.2%), the Lisbon metropolitan area (19.3%) and the Porto metropolitan area (10.6%). This spatial distribution is closely related to labour market incorporation due to the economic specialization of Portuguese regions (Reis et al. 2010) and shows the relevance of pioneer migrants and labour recruiters in establishing routes for future flows (de Haas 2010). The geographical patterns of settlement have been redesigned and/or reinforced by migrant networks whose members “ease the path” for potential migrants by reducing the costs of future migration (Massey et al. 1998; de Haas 2010; Garip and Asad 2013).

The future evolution of the community size is quite uncertain, not only due to the economic crisis in Portugal, but also to better prospects in Morocco and the acknowledgement of better opportunities in other European countries. The effect, on the Moroccan community, of the recent change in the Portuguese migration law (Law no. 59/2017 and Law no. 102/2017), facilitating the regularization and import of migrant workers, remains to be seen. One could envisage two contradictory trends: (i) a progressive maintenance or even a decline in the number of new arrivals of Moroccans to work in agriculture; (ii) however, despite low wages, the growing demand of agricultural labourers in Portugal, where the community already has a significant presence, together with growing islamophobia in other European countries, may also attract more individuals, from different social backgrounds, to Portugal.

Before moving on to explore the fieldwork results, we will briefly outline the characteristics of the sample. The Algarve sample is quite balanced in terms of gender (50.2% male and 49.8% female) with most of the interviewees of working age (45.9% aged between 30 and 39, and only 7.2% aged 60 or older). The main activity of the respondents is agriculture (56%), followed by those who are inactive (13%), unemployed (12%) and those who work in semi-skilled or unskilled manual positions (9.7%). This is largely a reflection of the respondents’ education level, given that almost 44% had no formal schooling or had failed to complete primary education, a quarter of the sample completed primary education and around one-fifth lower secondary.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.