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From Closed to Open Doors:
Portuguese Emigration under the Corporatist Regime

 

Maria Ioannis B. Baganha
University of Coimbra
[email protected]

 


Abstract

This paper analyses the Portuguese emigration policy under the corporatist regime. It departs from the assumption that sending countries are no more than by bystanders in the migratory process. The paper goes a step further, claiming that in the Portuguese case, not only did the Estado Novo (New State) control the migratory flows that were occurring, but that it used emigration to its own advantage. I tried next to present evidence to show that by the analysis of the individual characteristics of the migrants and of their skills, their exodus couldn’t have harmed the country’s economic growth during the sixties, since the percentage of scientific and technical manpower was, when compared to other European countries, far too scarce to frame an industrial labour force higher than the existing one. The paper concludes that during this period, the most likely hypothesis is that the Portuguese migratory flow was composed of migrants that were redundant to the domestic economy.

Keywords

Emigration, Portugal, Estado Novo, New State, Corporatist, Salazar, Migration Policy, Labour, Economy, Economic Growth


Introduction

The political sanctioning of immigration may foster open-door policies in order to maximise the country’s labour supply, it may induce the adoption of quota systems in order to help preserve cultural and political integrity, or it may even promote the incorporation of special skills and intellectual capital. In turn, the political sanctioning of emigration may lead to the selection, promotion, or restriction of emigrants’ departures, which can and usually does distort the composition of the migratory flow, directly affecting the level of remittances that emigration produces and thus its impact on the sending country’s economy. The adoption of one of these main types of policy by a receiving or a sending state has varied historically in accordance with the state’s own perception of domestic collective interests. The fact that sending and receiving states are integral parts of the migratory process has long been recognised (e.g. Zolberg 1983). However, the fact that this distinctive feature of international migration has to be built into the conceptual frameworks constructed to explain these processes has proved less consensual. In particular, it should be admitted that the role played by the sending state is more often than not overlooked (e.g. Böhning 1984).

The Portuguese case is no exception to this rule. In fact, the main available explanations for Portuguese emigration after the Second World War stress either the duality of Portuguese society and the imbalances of the country’s economic structure1 or the wage differential between Portugal and the receiving countries as the main factors driving a growing number of migrants out of the country.2 I do not deny the importance of either of these factors: in fact the consideration of domestic conditions is extremely relevant for explaining why migratory pressure was endemic in Portugal, while higher rewards for labour abroad are essential for understanding why, at a given moment, migratory pressure turned into emigration. What I am trying to say is that both approaches are lacking in several respects as explanations for the Portuguese migratory process.

Just consider, for instance, the timing of the Portuguese emigration to France, the largest recipient of Portuguese emigration after World War II. The analysis of foreign arrivals in France, which was a major receiving country during this period and the preferred destination for Portuguese emigrants, from 1950 to 1974 clearly exemplifies this point. Not until 1961 did Portuguese arrivals exceed a total of 10,000 migrants, representing 10.5% of all foreign arrivals in France (which that year numbered 160,000 persons). Previously, immigration to France was mainly composed of Italians and Spaniards.3

From 1962 onwards, Portugal had a constantly increasing share of the influx of foreign labour into France. This contribution reached its peak in 1970 and 1971. Total arrivals numbered 255,000 in 1970, and 218,000 in 1971, with the Portuguese representing 53% and 51% respectively of the total foreign inflow.4 The Portuguese were not simply replacing the Italians and the Spaniards numerically, they were also taking up the job vacancies made available or unfilled by them, namely in public works, construction, domestic and personal services and in agriculture.5 An obvious question raised by the schedule of Portuguese emigration to France raises is, why didn’t the Portuguese compete with the Italians and the Spaniards from the very beginning? And the answer has to be that if for no other reason than the exclusion of other possibilities, neither the necessary channels of information and support nor political sanctioning were sufficiently open for such competition to occur.

In this paper, I intend to discuss one of these frequently disregarded factors, namely the impact that the Estado Novo (New State), the corporatist regime that formally began in April 1933 and ended abruptly in April 1974,6 had on Portuguese emigration.7 I am particularly interested in showing that the distorted composition of the Portuguese migratory flow and the high level of remittances it generated were the direct result of state interference in emigration. More generally speaking, I wish to demonstrate, by considering the Portuguese case, how a non-democratic regime, which in its fundamental law submitted the individual’s right to freedom of movement to its own definition of collective interest (whether this was the composition of the domestic labour market or the state colonial aims in Africa), changed from an anti-emigration policy to a quota system policy and ended up subscribing to an open-door policy, in response to its own changes in economic policy. Moreover, in the process, the regime used to its own advantage the openness that characterised the Western European labour market from the Second World War to the oil-crisis of 1973 -1974.


Portuguese Emigration Policy

As in many other respects, Portuguese emigration policy during the Estado Novo represents a break with the past. In fact, while until 1933 the liberal rights of freedom of movement were formally respected, after that date they became legally subject to the economic and imperial interests of the state. Article 31 of the 1933 Constitution reads as follows: “The state has the right and the obligation of coordinating and regulating the economic and social life of the Nation with the aim of populating the national territories, protecting emigrants and disciplining emigration.” Under the scope of these objectives, the Estado Novo sought to combine three main aspects: the country’s labour needs, its interests in Africa and the extra financial capabilities that came from remittances, promoted by the supervised export of labour within the international market. The consideration of these aspects varied over time and had a direct bearing on the changes in the emigration policy pursued by the government.

The legal framework for controlling and disciplining emigration began to be constructed quite early on, in fact well before 1933. But, with one exception that will be referred to later on, most of the legislation enacted before 1933 was intended to control and protect the emigrant and not to restrict departures. The same cannot, however, be said of the Law adopted in 1944 (Decree-Law No. 33:918 of September 5) which forbade the issue of an ordinary passport to any industrial worker or rural labourer. Operating in conjunction with the Law of 1929 (Decree-Law No. 16:782 of April 27), which forbade anybody aged over 14 and under 45 unable to prove that they had successfully completed their primary school education from migrating, this law barred most of the population from emigration, given the Portuguese society’s endemic illiteracy of the society, and laid the foundations for the adoption of discretionary decisions by the emigration services.

Such legal provisions would in fact have had little effect if a coordinating system had not been brought into existence. In 1947, after a temporary total ban on emigration, a special government agency, simultaneously dependent on the Foreign and Home Ministries, was created to regulate and supervise emigration (Decree-Law No. 36:558 of October 28). This service was called Junta da Emigração (Emigration Committee), and it had the specific strategic goal of implementing a quota system that would define the maximum number of departures by region and occupation after taking into account regional labour needs and the structure of the active population.

If we consider that annual average departures did not exceed 11,000 a year during the 1930s and fell to 9,000 a year during the 1940s, such interest in controlling emigration is at first quite astounding, particularly since emigration was no longer a viable option due to the course of international events. It did, however, obey the rationale of the corporatist regime of submitting individual rights to the collective interest, and later on met the need for using the safety valve mechanism to reduce the existing demographic surplus, frequently recognised in official statements during the 1950s (e.g. Diário do Governo 1958:550-887).

In keeping with this same logic, several bilateral treaties were signed during the 1960s, namely with the Netherlands, France and the Federal Republic of Germany. These treaties, openly entered into in order to ensure a greater control of emigration, as well as to maximise the economic returns brought by emigration to these countries, must, however, be considered alongside the internal legislation adopted during this period (e.g. Decree-Law No. 44:422 of June 29, 1962). This legislation further cemented the links between state control of emigration, and information about domestic labour needs and government economic targets. To the text of the law, the government seems to have added some subtle provisions, namely giving directions to the Emigration Services to allow a maximum of only 30,000 departures a year and to ban legal departures of certain specific occupations, even when such measures were in conflict with the text of the bilateral treaties signed (Cassola Ribeiro 1987:75).

The compound effect of the bilateral treaties and the domestic measures taken during the 1960s was to ensure a migratory flow that the state did not consider to be harmful to the country’s labour supply, but instead beneficial to the country’s economic growth. A different idea seems to have been held by the traditional industrial and rural elites of the time, both of them claiming, as in the past, that legal and, above all, illegal emigration was producing significant labour shortages and causing wages to skyrocket.

The government responded to these complaints with apparently paradoxical measures. In 1965, illegal emigration ceased to be a crime punishable by law and the need for a proof of literacy was suppressed. These measures are puzzling, particularly since they came at a time when the war in Africa was at its fiercest and the complaints from the traditional economic elites were becoming louder and louder.

The government’s reasoning was based on two different assumptions: first, there was in fact an excess labour supply that could be profitably exported without endangering the country’s labour needs; second, since the 1950s, government economic policy had been gradually abandoning its initial strategy of promoting, by state intervention, the highly labour-intensive traditional industries of northern Portugal and the interests of rural landowners in favour of supporting the creation of a leading modern industrial sector in the Lisbon area. This industrial sector would absorb most of the existing labour supply of skilled workers, highly-skilled workers and professionals, the types of labour for which emigration had never held any particular attraction.
Accordingly, on the eve of the 1974 Revolution, the Corporatist State was about to promulgate the most liberal law of this period, which the legislator justified through the benefits that emigration provided, namely gains in productivity and a rationalisation of the methods of production, concluding with the following statement: “emigration, acting as a positive factor for modernisation and the rationalisation of labour, has made a powerful contribution to the progress and development of the country.” In view of such an understanding,8 it is no surprise that the government opted for a liberal emigration policy. Such liberalisation came, however, at a time when the receiving countries were moving in the opposite direction. In other words, the Estado Novo was about to open its doors when other countries were closing theirs.


Emigration and Economic Policies


As we have just seen, Portuguese emigration policy during the Estado Novo may be divided into three main periods. The first period runs from 1933 to 1946. During this period, emigration was controlled and disciplined, not because the departures taking place were seen as dangerous to the country’s labour supply, nor because the Portuguese were responding en masse to an international demand that did not in fact exist, but because such legal measures were an undeniable obligation of the government, an integral part of the doctrinaire nationalist and authoritarian principles of the regime: the subordination of individual rights to the collective interest, the promotion of the country’s self-sufficiency, and the defence of a certain isolation from the exterior.9 In order to implement these principles, social conflict and competition had to be suppressed or at least closely regulated.

The economy was legally framed under the scope of these new principles. After 1931, the industrial sector became regulated and disciplined, particularly in regard to three aspects: output growth, the creation and localisation of new or existing industries, and the transfer of the site of productive units.10 Protective tariffs were adopted to protect domestic industry from external competition, whilst the national economy was defended from financial internationalisation by the law covering the ‘Nationalisation of Capital’ adopted in 1943. In Salazar’s own words, this law was enacted because: “all economic factors belonging to or acting within the Portuguese Nation must be integrated into the domestic economy, and must, above all, serve the domestic economy. They must follow its directives and obey its dictates” (Salazar, Discursos, in Marques 1988:38).

The agricultural sector was subjected to a similar intervention. In this sector, the main government measure was known as the ‘Wheat Campaign’, which was particularly active between 1929 and 1938. It primarily took the form of direct subsidies, low credit, and major irrigation projects. Finally, with the 1935 law of ‘Economic Reconstitution’, the Estado Novo launched several major public works projects for the period. These projects were carried out between 1937 and 1950 and affected several infrastructures, namely communications, harbours, energy, the water supply, the road network and the merchant navy.11

The results of all this direct state intervention and control over the economy were that, at least for a while, the country’s grain production increased significantly, public works greatly improved the country’s infrastructures, generating a significant amount of state-sponsored employment. But, as Marques (1988) stressed, the first and most important result of the Estado Novo’s intervention on the economy was that competition was replaced by state intervention. As may be expected, Salazar judged these results quite differently: “...although the largest projects are not yet contributing to the general well-being, the progress achieved during these last few years is in fact remarkable... And no single sign of progress is more revealing than to have guaranteed work and food for the population, which now grows, does not emigrate and enjoys ever greater standards of living” (Salazar, Discursos, 1961: XXII-XXIII).

The second period corresponds roughly to the 1950s. During this period, the Estado Novo progressively changed its previous economic discourse to a discourse favouring the country’s industrialisation on a path leading to progress and modernisation. When the First Development Plan was launched in 1953, it was Salazar who stated:

 


It is known that industry has higher returns than agriculture and that only through industrialisation can the standards of living of the population be decidedly improved. Only with industrialisation is it possible to attain high demographic densities without serious danger. Without a given level of industrialisation, we will have no internal market for some rural productions, nor can we restrict an excessive level of emigration, which, in some cases, is already occurring under conditions we deem to be unsatisfactory. ... Industrialisation has to be carried out and encouraged, for the above-mentioned reasons.... (Discursos, 1959:103, 104)


Aware that the existing population surplus in the countryside could not be significantly channelled to Africa, and convinced that the country’s progress had to be achieved through industrialisation, the government tolerated the formation and development of a new migratory movement to Europe, allowing the spread of channels of information and support, within the parameters legally defined in the previous period.

The third period covers the remaining years of the regime, i.e. until 1974. It was a period of change marked by the internationalisation of the economy12 and a substantial rate of economic growth. The rationale for the changes taking place can be found in the words of the Secretary of State for the Economy, Correia de Oliveira, who, in 1966, attributed the country’s backwardness in relation to the other European economies to the longlasting protection of domestic industry against competition, innovation and modern technology, as well as to the sacrifice of the agricultural sector to the development of industry (Marques 1988:93). On this last point, he wrote: “We based our industrial development on low wages, and these on low food prices, which were in turn based on fixed and frozen prices for agricultural products. Having been maintained for so long, these prices have discouraged investment in the agricultural sector” (quoted in Marques 1988: 93).

During this period, the interests of the traditional economic elites (northern textile and consumer good industries and rural landowners) lost ground to the leading economic, financial and industrial groups, based in the Lisbon area and much less dependent than the traditional elites on the rural and unskilled population. Faced with a war in Africa that absorbed 50% of public revenue, and aware that emigration could effectively absorb a large part of the rural exodus essential to the country’s modernisation, the Estado Novo embarked upon a gradual process of liberalising emigration. Notice, for example, that while the Plano Intercalar de Fomento (Interim Growth Plan) (1964) provided for the creation of 20,000 thousand new jobs between 1965 and 1967 (Rocha 1982:1048), the emigration services were by that time receiving instructions to allow 30,000 annual departures, which seems to indicate that the state considered that most of the rural exodus was to be absorbed abroad and not domestically.

The analysis of the main laws enacted during the corporatist regime and the discourse of the several economic actors affected by emigration raise a central question: was the state making a correct assessment of the domestic situation when it based the liberalisation of emigration on the assumption that emigration would not be harmful to the country’s labour needs and, in fact, judged emigration to be beneficial because it helped foster the country’s modernisation by easing its transformation from an economic structure heavily marked by the size of the agricultural sector to a more balanced one? To answer this question, I will briefly consider the socio-demographic characteristics of migrants, some indicators on the evolution of the economic and demographic impact of emigration, and finally the evolution of the labour market.


Some Main Characteristics of Portuguese Emigration

Between 1933 and 1974, approximately 1.98 million Portuguese left the country; 32% of the departures took place clandestinely. Close to three-quarters of this exodus occurred between 1961 and 1974 (see Table 1 and Graph 1). Until 1960, more than 80% of migrants headed for the Americas, with Brazil accounting for most of the flow: 80% until 1949 and 68% during the 1950s (5). After 1960, the main destination of the Portuguese migratory flow was Western Europe (75% of the total), and more specifically France and Germany (Baganha 1990, 1994 and 1998) (6). Table 1 and Fig. 1 can be summarised very briefly as follows: Portuguese emigration grew constantly and substantially from 1950, when departures numbered 22,000, to 1970, when departures numbered 183,000. It declined from 1971 onwards, when departures numbered 158,000. The peak years of Portuguese emigration after the Second World War occurred between 1965 and 1974, when the average annual number of departures was 122,000 thousand migrants. A crude but representative image of Portuguese emigration can thus be expressed by three lines: an ascending line from 1950 to 1964 (with the following numerical limits: 22,000 and 76,000); a horizontal line from 1965 to 1974 (at 122,000) and a descending line from 1975 to 1979 (falling from 52,000 to 29,000).

The social and demographic characteristics of emigrants are not very clearly known after 1960, when the official register covered less than half of the departures actually taking place. Prior to 1960, the typical emigrant was a single male, aged 15 to 35, and predominantly of rural origin. From 1960 to the early 1970s, when the process of family reunification became predominant, and based on the registers of the receiving countries, what we know is that the flow was predominantly composed of males of an active age with few or no skills; departures were regarded both individually as well as socially as a temporary situation, as a stage in a life cycle. And finally, when compared with other migratory flows, Portuguese emigration showed a considerable financial return in the form of remittances (Sopemi 1991,1992). In short, Portuguese emigration was essentially an international movement of labour, mostly composed of migrants with few or no skills. Due to the volume it attained and the financial return it yielded, such emigration had an enormous economic and demographic impact on Portuguese society.


Demographic and Economic Impact of Emigration

The analysis of the natural and effective demographic growth occurring between 1931 and 1980 shows that over half of the country’s natural growth was absorbed by emigration,13 which means that the impact of emigration on the country’s demographic growth was considerably greater, given that a part of the potential growth never took place, since a considerable proportion of the population of childbearing age had left the country permanently (Nazareth 1976). It thus seems reasonable to accept that emigration acted as an efficient demographic safety valve during this period.

That the returns yielded by emigration in the form of remittances were of considerable influence on the country’s economy is also undeniable. Two indicators are often mentioned to demonstrate the impact of emigration on the Portuguese economy; the ratio of remittances to exports and the ratio of remittances to Gross Domestic Product. Both corroborate what has just been said. Table 3 summarises the evolution of remittances when compared to exports in the period from 1950 to 1979. According to the data, remittances bore a ratio of about 13% to exports during the 1950s, 25% in the 1960s, and 56% in the 1970s. Table 3 summarises the evolution of remittances in relation to GDP from 1950 to 1979. The figures show that remittances were of ever growing importance in relation to GDP - 2% in the 1950s, 4% in the 1960s, and 8% in the 1970s.

In short, during this period emigration was the single most valuable export, since no other goods or services had such a share of Portuguese exports (15). It makes no difference whether we consider remittances to be a major safety net for the country’s imports or an addition to the country’s own productive capacities; the conclusion is the same. The impact of emigration on the Portuguese economy was drastic and increased throughout the period. This point is of some importance, since, as has been successfully argued, “to benefit fully from remittances, the sending country must be able to depend on the flow being consistent and reliable, not subject to fluctuations or secular decline” (Heisler 1985:472). As has been seen, the evolution of Portuguese emigrants’ remittances fits this pattern.

In the last part of this work, I shall try to assess the impact of emigration on the Portuguese labour market throughout the 1960s, the period when, as we have just seen, most of the departures took place. The question that I will to try and answer is the following: was emigration harmful to Portuguese economic growth? Or to put it slightly differently, had those departures never taken place, could this situation have contributed to economic growth?


Emigration and Economy

The answer to the above question may be approached from different perspectives. My approach is based on economic development studies.14 One of the links that these studies have highlighted is the interdependence existing between the structure of human resources, per capita income and the rate of development of any given economy. The strong correlation found between the percentage of professional and technical workers in the active population and the level of employment in the industrial sector is also of great interest for the present analysis.15

An analysis of the first relationship, between the structure of human resources, per capita income and the growth rate of an economy, was carried out for the early 1960s by Mário Murteira (1969). From this analysis, one first result is of particular interest: countries with an average per capita income of US$600 had on average a higher share of scientific and technical personnel than did Portugal, whilst the percentage of skilled and unskilled workers was on average lower than that observed in Portugal.16 At that time, Portugal belonged to the group of countries that had a per capita income of less than US$600, and therefore Murteira’s results suggest that given the country’s per capita income and the percentage of scientific and technical personnel in the country’s active population, job opportunities for skilled and unskilled workers could not have been very different from those existing in the 1960s, since the percentage of the active population engaged in these types of occupations was already higher than expected.

If we accept that the level of scientific and technical personnel in the active population restricts the level of industrial employment in an economy, then the impact of emigration on the country’s economic growth can be negative if it is proved that a significant proportion of the scientific and technical population leaves during this period. The existing evidence suggests otherwise. Not only do we know that the overwhelming majority of the Portuguese who left did not belong to this group, but we know from the study on wages made by Xavier Pintado that there was no economic reason for this group to decide to emigrate, since they enjoyed identical purchasing power and standards of living to their European counterparts.17

Although an unknown number of Portuguese scientific and technical workers did in fact leave the country during this period, as a sign of opposition to the regime or to avoid conscription, their number was not large enough to have an impact on the structure of the active population. At least this is what can be inferred from the occupational structure of Portuguese emigrants entering France in 1970, where that group represented 0%. Of the 88,634 entries registered by the National Immigration Office, only 31 persons belonged to this group (Ferreira 1976:165). It is true that this was not the only destination of this group of migrants, but if their number were larger, they would have been mostly noticeable in France. The figures available on return migrants also confirm this point. 92% of the returning population had no more than a primary school education, only 1% had attended college, and 85% had not attended any training in the host country (Silva et al. 1984:77 and 82). Furthermore, we should note that these figures include the children of returning migrants and thus are biased towards formal education.18

In short, the government seems to have correctly assessed the composition of the outflow when, in the 1973 Bill on Emigration Policy (Proceedings of the Chamber of Corporations, No. 142, 23 February 1973), it stated: “emigration of technical personnel is insignificant, as is that of highly skilled workers.” If it is not possible to attribute any responsibility for non-economic emigration to the country’s economic growth, it is even less possible to do so in the case of the economic emigration of poorly skilled or unskilled active or non-active workers, since, given the distorted structure of the active population at that time, their actually remaining in the country would have been redundant. In fact, all evidence suggests that their productive contribution could not be utilized, in view of the shortage of scientific and technical personnel.19


Conclusion

In this work, through the description made of Portuguese emigration policy under the corporatist regime, I have tried to point out that sending countries are more than mere bystanders in the migratory process. I have, in fact, gone a step further in claiming that, in the Portuguese case, not only did the Estado Novo control the migratory flows that were occurring, but it also used emigration to its own advantage. I have tried to present evidence to show that, from an analysis of the individual characteristics of migrants and their skills, it would seem that their exodus was not harmful to the country’s economic growth during the 1960s, since, when compared to other European countries, the percentage of scientific and technical personnel was far too small to cope with an industrial labour force larger than the existing one.
During my work, I became aware that my findings could contribute to the longstanding debate on the benefits of emigration to the Portuguese economy. In its simplest form, this debate is grounded in the basic idea that Portugal exchanges one productive factor, labour, for another productive factor, capital, in the form of remittances. What is thus evaluated is whether the substitution of labour by capital has been beneficial or detrimental to the domestic economy.20 The implicit assumption in this reasoning is that emigration is an export of productive labour. My findings suggest that, during this period, the most likely hypothesis is that the Portuguese migratory flow was composed of migrants presenting zero marginal productivity for the domestic economy.

Tables and graph


Notes

 

1 Sedas Nunes, 1964; Almeida and Barreto, 1976; Serräo, 1977; Godinho, 1978.

2 Ferreira, 1976; Pereira and Barosa, 1989; Pereira, 1989.

3 Between 1950 and 1959, Italians represented more than half of the total foreign inflow. In 1960, Spaniards equalled the number of Italians entering France, with each nationality contributing 30,000 migrants to a total of 72,600 arrivals. The Spaniards replaced the Italians as the main suppliers of foreign labour to France from 1961 to 1965. From 1966 to 1972, Portugal replaced Spain as France’s main supplier of immigrant labour.

4 Office National d’ Immigration for the given years, in Antunes, 1973, 73 and 109.

5 See Seruya, in Stahl et al., 1982, Kritz et al., 1983, Böhning, 1984, and Branco, 1986.

6 It is not possible to dissociate the formal beginning of the Corporative Regime from the preceding Military Dictatorship that began on May 28, 1926, particularly after António Salazar re-entered the government in 1928 as the Secretary of State for Finance, because the legal framework that supported and gave coherence to the doctrinaire foundations of the Estado Novo began to be enacted during this period.

7 For a different interpretation of the impact of the Estado Novo on emigration see, Leeds, 1984.

8 A little earlier, Murteira and Branquinho’s analysis of the country’s economic performance had led them to a similar conclusion: ‘The relatively slow growth in employment (naturally together with the rapid increase in productivity) leads us to believe that the [positive] evolution of industrial productivity may somehow have been a consequence of emigration,...
Both wages and productivity are well below European levels, but while the second has risen faster than its European counterparts, the first has moved in the opposite direction. One can therefore conclude that, as far as labour costs are concerned, the evolution has favoured the Portuguese employers.’ A. Murteira and Branquinho, 1969:581

9 For a detailed analysis of the ideological bases of the regime, see Braga da Cruz, 1984:773-794 and, for an analysis of its economic policy, see Marques, 1988.

10 Law No. 19 354 of January of 1931 (Lei do Condicionamento Industrial – the Law of Industrial Conditioning). Law No. 1956 of May 1937 changed the character of the measures adopted in 1931 from temporary to permanent.

11 For a detailed appraisal of the economic policy of this period, see Marques, 1988.

12 In 1959, a much less protective tariff was adopted and in 1961 Portugal joined EFTA.

13 Between 1931 and 1970, the country’s natural growth (births minus deaths) was 3,839.9 million and the effective growth (i.e. the difference between the population present in the country at the beginning and at the end of the period) was 1,742.8 million (computed from the Boletim Anual, SEECP, 1980).

14 E.g. Murteira, et al., 1969; Carvalho, 1967.

15 An analysis of the interdependence between industrial employment and scientific and technical manpower was carried out by Gnanasekaran (1965), who found a series of links that made it possible to express the interdependence between the structure of human resources and economic development.

16 It can be inferred from the results presented by Murteira (1969: 24, 29) that countries with a per capita income of US $600 had on average 4.6% of scientific, technical, and artistic active individuals, and 23.13% of skilled and unskilled active individuals. In Portugal, in 1960, such percentages were 2.8% and 27.9% respectively.

17 Xavier Pintado stated as follows: ‘in terms of purchasing power and standards of living, top-level management has higher salaries in Portugal than in other industrialised countries.’ Pintado, 1967:73. See also, Carvalho, 1967.

18 Poinard, 1963, Amaro, 1985, and Martins, 1986.

19 In fact, in view of the structure existing in 1960 and 1970, the expected proportion of scientific and technical personnel would have been roughly twice that of Portugal.

20 In the Portuguese case, more often than not, the positive effects, namely the share of the remittances channelled to productive investment and the benefits deriving from some new skills acquired by the returning migrants, were judged insufficient to compensate for the loss of manpower. Firstly, because, when compared to the share of remittances used for private consumption, the impact of emigration on domestic capital formation was considered to be small; secondly, because even this small effect was considered to be offset by the inflationary tendencies produced by the higher purchasing power of a growing segment of the population receiving extra income from abroad; and, thirdly, because at the level that emigration reached after 1960 it endangered the country’s labour supply.

 

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Copyright 2003, ISSN 1645-6432
e-JPH, Vol.1, number 1, Summer 2003