When Kamal Bhattarai first arrived in Portugal from Nepal on a tourist visa a decade ago, he hardly knew anyone. With limited Portuguese, for years he scraped by working odd jobs in restaurants and on farms hoping to build a new life for his family.
“Everyone wants to move away [from Nepal]. There are few job opportunities, constant political and economic crises, and young people want to find a better life with higher wages because people earn 200 euros a month,” he says.
For the last two decades, Portugal’s liberal immigration approach has been an outlier in the European Union and has attracted people from around the world, including many from South Asia.
“In 2007, you could even enter Portugal as a tourist, and if you received a work contract and paid social security, you could legalize yourself here,” says Alberto Matos, a longtime labor activist who works with migrant workers at Solidariedade Imigrante, (Immigrant Solidarity), an association for the defense of immigrant rights in Portugal.
Kamal Bhattarai is the director of the Nepalese Intercultural Association Lisboa, Portugal (NIALP), which works to facilitate the integration of Nepali and other South Asian immigrants into Portuguese society, helps with legal support, and provides health education for women. Photo by Nicholas Muller.
For Bhattarai and many others from South Asia, Portugal has been one of the only existing avenues to come to Europe.
“When I first started living here, I saw many migrants from my country and neighboring ones with a lot of issues trying to integrate here. It is very difficult to find a job, to adjust here, to find a home, and deal with bureaucracy,” he says.
Once Bhattarai got on his feet, he started NIALP, the Nepalese Intercultural Association Lisboa, Portugal, to help new arrivals adapt to life in Portugal.
“People need a job to survive here and support big families back home, ” he says. The association provides free Portuguese classes, as well as social and legal support to new arrivals from South Asian countries.
NIALP offers Portuguese language classes to help new arrivals. Photo by Nicholas Muller.
Over several decades, droves of young people have left Portugal in search of better economic opportunities elsewhere in the EU. In recent years, eagerly filling the gap in Portugal have been Indians, Nepalis, and Bangladeshis. They have come to work on berry farms in the south’s agricultural heartland region, called the Alentejo, with the ultimate goal of attaining a coveted Portuguese passport after five years of residence.
“We’ve left our country. Young Portuguese people have left theirs. Even if some people don’t like that we are here, we are still revitalizing this place and bringing a lot of money here,” says one unnamed Nepali worker.
“The main reason Portugal has seen the number of immigrants rise is because it needs them,” says Luis Pinheiro, a former head of the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA). In just the last five years, the foreign population of Portugal has doubled. According to reporting by the site Infomigrants.net, Portuguese authorities said that “more than 86,000 South Asian citizens were legalized through the former pathway between 2018 and 2022.”
European Commission statistics state that migrant labor serves to strengthen the Portuguese economy. It wrote that in 2022, “800,000 immigrants contributed over a billion euros to the social security system, while receiving approximately 257 million euros in social benefits, leaving a positive balance of 1.6 billion euros.”
Om and Mekha, from Nepal themselves, now help others to deal with legalization issues at Solidariedade Imigrante, an association for the Defense of Immigrants Rights. Photo by Nicholas Muller.
Big Changes
But in June of this year, the door suddenly slammed shut. Portugal’s newly elected center-right government, pushed by the populist far-right Chega party, drastically overhauled the country’s immigration laws, effectively ending the “manifestation of interest” legal mechanism that allowed non-EU migrants to move to Portugal. Portuguese outlet Publico wrote that, “immigrants from countries like India, Nepal, and Bangladesh are likely to be most affected by the changes.” The government’s new policy stance explicitly states that it would prioritize nationals from Portuguese-speaking countries.
Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said, “We need people in Portugal willing to help us build a fairer and more prosperous society. But we cannot go to the other extreme and have wide-open doors.”
Critics of the change, such as Socialist leader Pedro Nuno Santos, say the end of the “manifestation of interest” mechanism could lead to problems for those who arrive without a work visa, warning people might be left in an “inhumane situation with no way out.”
Migrants wait outside of the Lisbon office of Solidariedade Imigrante in Lisbon, Portugal. Photo by Nicholas Muller.
“Right now, there are at least 400,000 people, mostly Indian and Nepali migrants, who are waiting for these residence permit renewals. They are in a very vulnerable situation because their employers take advantage of them. They cannot lose their job by any means and they have to go along with any demands made by their employers,” says Dr. Alexandra Pereira, currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Portuguese Catholic University (UCP) in Lisbon, specializing in Nepali migration, particularly in Portugal and Europe.
“This still means that there is labor demand especially in agriculture in the south and there are still people coming here from other European countries with expired visas. Working in agriculture, tourism, hospitality, they are still arriving and there is no way out for them to obtain documents. They are the most vulnerable people right now because the new government didn’t say this was a temporary suspension, they just suspended the MOI procedure. But as time has passed, we can understand it has now ended,” she says.
A Sector Needs Workers, Migrants Face Scams
Portugal’s agricultural sector continues to boom, particularly from the ever-growing demand in the soft fruit sector which relies primarily on South Asian workers. In 2023, export revenues for berries reached almost 300 million euros, with most berries being sent to German and British supermarkets.
“Portugal has big labor demands in certain economic areas of activity and these migrants keep coming because there is labor demand. South Asians are in a dangerous situation because they are more vulnerable to the smugglers and to the mafias that bring them to Portugal and to exploitation by their employers,” Pereira says.
According to an immigration lawyer who did not want to be named that works with South Asian clients in Lisbon in the Mourara Commercial Center, “Our government services were not ready for such a demand by so many people. In the last two years, the news spread that it was easy in our country to get a residence permit. But for the ones coming now, forget it. It will be very hard to get a visa and there is a shortage of people in the embassies and consulates. Now the door is closed. However, many people are still being lured into coming here even though there is no way now to get a passport.”
A Bangladeshi man picks raspberries at a farm close to Longueira, Portugal. Photo by Nicholas Muller.
“They will continue to come. But the suffering will increase. Owners know that workers who come after June 3 don’t have the right to documents anymore, but they will give people fake contracts anyway,” says the lawyer.
Many agencies in the Mouraria Commercial Center in Lisbon continue to scam and profit handsomely off of new arrivals and migrants with insufficient documentation, convincing them to buy services they don’t need, and giving them a false impression it is still possible to legalize themselves.
“As there are so many thousands of migrants waiting for renewal of their documents, they tell the migrants that they need to go with them to the AIMA offices charging them 200-300 euros, promising to make the process faster. But that doesn’t happen and they are being ripped off,” says Pereira.
An office selling services catered to South Asian migrants at the Mouraria commercial center in Lisbon. The numerous offices and agencies are well known for scamming workers who do not understand the country’s bureaucracy. Photo by Nicholas Muller.
A Situation Ripe for Exploitation
Alberto Matos, a longtime labor activist for migrant workers’ rights in the Alentejo region, paints a grim picture of the situation. With the new restrictions in place, concerns are growing about the potential for increased illegal work and even more exploitation of workers as local companies have an insatiable demand for cheap labor from South Asia.
“We know that 23 percent of the Portuguese economy is informal,” he says.
Matos warns, “They closed the door to legalization, and opened all the windows to the black market. Even in Portuguese embassies and consulates, they have no capacity to deal with all of the demand. Furthermore, they are surrounded by local mafias in Delhi, Dhaka, and Kathmandu.”
There are no appointments for visas available in Delhi, and it is now the only place to get a visa issued for Nepalis and Bangladeshis too as there are no consular services in those countries. Everything must be done through third party agents, costing people hundreds or thousands of dollars as demand increases.
An agency in a shopping center Vila Nova de Milfontes offers services and openly recruits agricultural workers for nearby farms. Photo by Nicholas Muller.
Many workers arrive deep in debt, having paid exorbitant sums to come to Portugal either on tourist, work, or expired EU visas. Matos says migrants tell him, “Well, I paid 15,000-20,000 euros in India to come to Portugal to work. They take on a debt, should pay it for years, and are slaves to this debt. Their own families at home are forced to pay this debt and are menaced by the local mafias back home,” he says.
Currently, the minimum salary is only 820 euros per month and this barely leaves workers enough to survive. After paying for housing, debt, and sending money home, many workers are left with just 100-150 euros per month.
“Now it is worse. When they arrive, in general, they work for intermediaries which are mostly from India, linked to the mafias in India which provide everything to these workers when they arrive: a ‘contract,’ work, housing, which is miserable, transport in vans to the farms. Workers pay for all of it,” he says.
In a house visited for this story in the town of Saõ Teotonio, 55 workers from Bangladesh and Nepal were seen living in squalid and cramped conditions. They said the house was provided by the company and many said they were paying 200 euros per person to live four to a room. There are many houses around the region in a similar state.
Clothes hang outside of a house that has 55 people living in it in Saõ Teotonio. Substandard living conditions and overcrowding are common in houses across the region. Photo by Nicholas Muller.
Other migrants said that some workers live on site on the farms in equally difficult or even worse conditions. Most have to pay a fee to agents or to the company for housing, which takes a significant chunk out of their earnings.
Many of these villages and towns are far away from cities in the remote Alentejo region, which makes oversight of human rights and labor violations more difficult to document. The conditions are ripe for exploitation and abuse of migrants who depend on these jobs for the ability to stay on a path to citizenship. Many endure extraordinarily difficult conditions.
“It is a form of militarization of their work. You should obey everything even if it is the most stupid thing you can imagine. If you work 12 hours, you should receive overtime pay, but they were paying only 6.50 euros and asked for more. Those were for permanent workers. Imagine what it is like for the temporary ones,” says Matos.
Facebook groups and other social media platforms like TikTok are littered with offers used to openly recruit temporary workers for berry picking and agriculture in Portugal, but these are often scams or from farms that purportedly underpay workers.
A room in a house in Saõ Teotonio that houses people who work on nearby berry farms. Photo by Nicholas Muller.
Purposely Obscure Practices
Large companies often contract workers through intermediaries, distancing themselves from worker conditions and minimizing the possibility of being held responsible for them.
“The main way workers are exploited by companies is that they don’t give out a lot of jobs. They contract intermediaries who ‘rent’ the workers and the landlords are not really the direct bosses,” Matos says.
During the core picking season, the workforce expands dramatically.
“After March, the industry expands from 5,000 to 20,000 workers. The exploitation is enormous,” he says.
Small-scale producers also face intense pressure to deliver fruits quickly or they will lose out completely.
“During the peak season, small-scale Portuguese producers are also under immense pressure when they have to deliver these fruits, and have just minutes and hours to do it. If they don’t do it, they don’t get paid,” Matos says.
Raspberries from the Portuguese Alentejo region at a supermarket in Berlin, Germany. Most berries are exported to supermarkets in northern Europe. Photo by Nicholas Muller.
Despite efforts to address these violations through legal channels, workers continue to face significant obstacles.
Matos explains, “Previously, intermediaries were taken to court for purported abuses, but it didn’t work. Generally they were mainly Indian, Pakistani, and they would disappear… [They would] quickly change names and tax numbers, which were impossible to take to court and trace because they had false addresses. The big landlords were never held responsible.”
Matos notes that sometimes there are crackdowns. “Almost every year, the judicial police arrest 40-50 guys of those small intermediaries,” he says.
One Bangladeshi man interviewed for this story who works as an intermediary recruiting workers through a small shop he runs says that it is common practice that people are recruited to work on agricultural jobs by people they already know who are there.
“Their own countrymen are taking advantage of them because they are dependent on them to secure and maintain employment, and also they do not speak the language or know how to navigate the bureaucracy in the country. People are locked in because they have large debts to pay off, and often have multiple family members depending on them. Middlemen, local companies, and multinationals know this,” he says. He says that he makes sure people he connects to farms get paid fairly, but admits he gets paid two euros an hour of their wages.
Matos argues that this structure allows large multinational companies operating in the region the ability to almost completely avoid responsibility for purported abuses workers complain about. There have been numerous reports in Portuguese and international media reporting similar abuses.
A worker shows the berries he has picked on a farm in the Alentejo region. Numerous people have complained of long hours, inadequate breaks, underpayment, and little access to water on the farms. Photo by Nicholas Muller.
Matos says, “Driscoll’s controls all of Odemira. They sell the patents and in the middle there is a big exploitation. At the end of the chain, they say ‘please give us the red fruits because we know how to sell them on international markets.’ We say the Odemira region is like a rent-a-belly for Driscolls.”
The world’s largest multinational berry company has repeatedly pushed back against previous reporting by the Guardian of purported underpayment of its workers. Driscoll’s told Fruitnet that “it does not tolerate any breach of local or international labor laws at farms in Portugal where its fruit is grown.” The company also said that “its policies banned practices including child labor, forced labor, human trafficking, coercion, abuse, harassment, and deficient unsafe or unhealthy conditions.”
Difficult Conditions Remain
Migrants from Nepal, India, and Bangladesh interviewed for this story in Saõ Teotonio have said otherwise. Numerous people interviewed for this story have complained of long hours and difficult working conditions. They do not have a clear understanding of what the status of their documents are or if anything is in process.
Shollomian, from Sylhet, Bangladesh, who came to Portugal on a tourist visa, works on a berry farm in Saõ Teotonio and says he works between 8-12 hours daily, starting at 5-6 a.m. Despite being told he would receive a residence permit within 12-14 months, he is still waiting 24 months later. Nonetheless, he sends 100-400 euros to his family in Bangladesh when he can and is optimistic things will work out.
Asystama, from Kathmandu, Nepal, is more pessimistic. The 24-year-old sometimes goes to the beach to take photos in nice clothes to send back to his family to give them the impression he is doing well.
He says, “I came to Portugal two years ago after seeing ads for work in Portugal on social media. I paid 3,000 euros for a visa through an agency in Delhi, plus airfare. I work picking berries for 8-12 hours a day in difficult conditions, earning 50 euros daily. Every four hours, we must pick eight kilograms. It is too difficult on the farm, it is too hot, and they do not give us water, and sometimes my nose bleeds. They do not give us food and we must bring our own. I send 230-450 euros home monthly to my family in Nepal. After two years, I still don’t have residency. Also, life here is very difficult and expensive. I advise others not to come – the work is too hard and there’s not enough of it.”
A young Nepali man who picks raspberries on a farm in the Alentejo region. Photo by Nicholas Muller.
New EU Forced Labor Rules
According to the European Commission’s Migration and Home Affairs department, “The majority of confirmed victims of trafficking were identified in trafficking in human beings for labor exploitation (72.8%), out of which 73.2% are in the agriculture sector.” The statistics are worse specifically in the Alentejo Region, where 51.7 percent of confirmed victims of human trafficking between 2008-2021 in Portugal occurred, with 74.5 percent being trafficked for the purpose of labor exploitation.
It also wrote that, “Due to the enormous geographical extension of the places where they are put to work, generally located in the interior of the Alentejo Region or in the west of the country, with difficult access conditions, their detection is difficult by the authorities in charge of supervising working conditions and staying in Portugal.”
Two young Nepali men who do seasonal work on farms and in hotels eat momos, a typical Nepali dish, at a restaurant in Faro, Portugal. Photo by Nicholas Muller.
On March 5, 2024, the European Council and the European Parliament struck a deal to ban products made with forced labor. It introduces a series of modifications clarifying responsibilities of the Commission and national competent authorities in the investigation and decision-making process. And national authorities in EU member states will be responsible for conducting investigations into suspected use of forced labor in companies’ supply chains. Theoretically, the Portuguese berry industry will have to ensure that its labor practices comply with these new EU regulations.
To avoid potential bans, withdrawals, or fines related to their products in the EU market, the new regulation “applies to all products, sectors, and economic operators, regardless of origin or size. It covers both imported and domestically produced goods within the EU. The prohibition applies to products at all stages of the supply chain, from raw materials to finished products.”
An Uncertain Future for the Alentejo
The future remains uncertain for thousands of South Asian workers as Portugal decides what its future immigration policy will be. Matos points out that the rapid expansion of the berry industry in the Alentejo is reaching a critical point.
“In Odemira, there is a big problem with water. The big dam of Santa Clara is very low and now they are trying to bring water from elsewhere. These current agricultural practices are unsustainable,” he says.
Regardless of what happens next, he will continue campaigning for better conditions and pay for migrant workers in the Alentejo. Several groups are organizing a joint protest on October 25 against the new law. “The extreme right says that our laws were too permissive and the law was too easy for people to legalize. But if there was no economy, the red fruits, greenhouses and agriculture, hotels, restaurants, and construction, then people wouldn’t come here. Of course mafias work with bad laws and if it is only illegal, it is better for mafias because people have to pay a lot more to work even illegally,” concludes Matos.
Bhattarai says people need to think twice about coming to Portugal now that the situation has significantly changed. “If you are expecting a better life, good income, it is not possible. There are many smugglers here who are trafficking in people and giving them false information and hopes. People need to verify that information before they come,” warns Bhattarai.