YOUR STORY
Adriana, 28
from Portugal
to Scotland
Some Stories shared by You
I have chosen Scotland as my Home. Two years ago I made the move that changed my life for so much better. Many people frown on me when I openly-hearted say that Scotland is my Home, with disappointment on their faces when I explain to them I don’t want Scotland to be a period of my life, an ‘in-between’ to make money with the final accomplishment of returning to Portugal. I do miss my family, my friends (the few who are still there), the food, the beauty of Lisbon and sometimes even a little bit of heat. But I do not belong there, I belong to where I am now. It is Edinburgh that makes me take a deep breath when I arrive from the airport and I see the old town ahead of me.
I have chosen Edinburgh some years ago when I was studying at Cavendish House Language School in my hometown. Almost every year this school made of only four members of staff would go on the saga of organizing a trip to an English speaking country for their students, and the time we visited Edinburgh was just marked in me. Since then I knew that was the place I wanted to live in. After finishing University I started looking for jobs and opportunities in Scotland, because I didn’t want to move empty handed, I didn’t want to arrive to nothing but my selfishness, I needed an excuse to the painful goodbyes. So I found a job that accepted me blindly and willingly, I flew for an interview in a couple of days and after two years I am still working in the same place. I consider myself to be very lucky, I wasn’t forced to immigrate, because before I needed, my will was already there.
Susana, 27
from Portugal
to Italy
I didn’t emigrate because I was trying to improve my financial situation. I started to travel because I was curious and bored with the perspective of a sedentary life in the place that I always knew with nothing new to know. When I started to travel, I didn’t want to stop anymore, but then I decided to settle in a Country that wasn’t mine… and now I don’t feel portuguese or italian anymore: I feel European and I want to enjoy this feeling and opportunity while I can.
I arrived in Italy as a Volunteer through the EVS Programme, after being an intern of the Leonardo daVinci Programme in Barcelona. I spent my 10 month's voluntary project not having the intention to stay, just thinking about returning home and preparing my next adventure… but the Cupid just caught me and I decided to stay in Italy for love. In the moment I decided to stay in Italy for good, I started to have this “immigrant” feeling of missing Home when I am away and feeling suffocated when I am there for more than 2 weeks. It is difficult being an immigrant, missing home, trying to get integrated, speaking 24/7 a language that is not yours, trying not to doubt yourself and your decision, but it feels really good when you realize you are taking your destiny onto your hands, building something, doing what you want and what makes you happy, struggling for a better life and being free! Because it is the feeling of being free that makes me feel not portuguese or italian, but european! Europe gave me the opportunity to travel, to see the world, to improve myself as a person and I would like to enjoy it while I can, and grow my european identity feeling.
Jovi, 31
from Lithuania
to UK
When I was young I was dreaming to have a proper job, live and die in my Birth Country as the majority of other Lithuanian during these times, where migration was not such a common phenomena as it is nowadays. I grew up surrounded by the nationalistic ideology where the nostalgia for great past times and so long awaited national freedom kept us all to be proud of our nation; it kept us all being a very nationalistic and hegemonic society.
However, everything has turned upside down once I have stepped outside my country and went to participate in the Erasmus student programme. Since then, I could never found my place in my Birth country, since then I would feel sometimes a black sheep, an alien... I would always feel my identity being split into many parts as if I became identityless, a stranger... All my previous views towards race, sexuality, disability, social status, equality have changed. I started to feel a hunger to continue travelling, meeting people, exploring the world and finding myself in this fast paced, competitive globalised world. And until now I feel I still can’t find my place wherever I go. None of the places I have been living in as an immigrant felt like my home. Therefore, I believe that migration is much more complex process as it seems from the first sight. Such experience can tear you apart but it can also provide many opportunities, it can transform your views and it can help you to become closer to the people from over the world.
Gonçalo was born in Portugal 32 years ago, but his mother was born in Angola, a portuguese ex-colony in Africa, that forced many citizens to escape from the Civil War in the 70’s. Being a second generation immigrant, he felted some discrimination 20 years ago, but he thinks something has changed…
Portugal was a country that in the XV and XVI century colonised a lot of territories in all continents, with a big presence in Africa, having strict connections with it since then, like a common language. In the 1970’s the Civil War in Angola, after the Independence War, forced one third of the population to escape and a lot have chosen Portugal has a destiny. Amongst the hundreds of refugees arriving to Portugal was also this 17 years old girl trying to having a better life. This was Gonçalo’s mother. Being son of an african immigrant, in the 80’s and 90’s he still felt some discrimination caused by the “lack of general knowledge about the immigrants, seen as non-cultured people, poor, and that came to ‘steal jobs’”. Fortunatly, this feeling vanished throughout the years. Gonçalo lives in Porto, the second bigger city in Portugal, and he feels like today there is much more acceptance towards his generation, the second generation immigrants. “I am saying that I feel this where I live but probably in rural areas or in the capital the reality can be different”. But why and how did this change happen? With the passing of the years and the mixing of cultures, almost everyone happens to have someone in the family with african origins and, as a “natural process”, the integration and acceptance increased. It wasn’t something made by the Government, on some attempt to improve immigrants integration, it was just time that increased the knowledge and tolerance towards this reality. In fact, what we can see as Government measure was the “isolation of ‘social neighbourhoods’ that put together and alone all the immigrants”, and that didn’t help. But the mixing of cultures along the years, and the end of the Civil War in 2002, gave the opportunity to the locals in Angola to have more educational opportunities, and that changed the stereotype from “someone that is escaping and has no more choices to seeing them as equals”.
Gonçalo has visited Angola some times as a tourist and he felt that “like in several african countries, the difference between the poor people and the rich people is really obvious”. At this moment, “the emigrated citizens could return to Angola if they have the intention to change the country, because now they have more knowledge and opportunities. But leaving everything that they built here, all the confort, to go there and start from scratch is really difficult.” He told us that his sister and his father went and tried to live there for some years, but personally he never felt the curiosity to go and live there, especially because Chemistry is not a field with many opportunities there.
For being in Europe “we have more opportunities and access to everything and everyone” and Gonçalo enjoyed this opportunities by participating in several projects in the UK, Turkey, Greece and Italy, where he lived for some months. “If the opportunity to emigrate comes, I will not think twice. (…) not because of economic needs, but because I like to travel, to learn new languages and meet new people”. Nowadays, the main reason to emigrate are not the finantial or social aspects , but the aspects of personal growth, knowledge and self-realization.
