The institution points out that it has found “an increase in requests for support by immigrants” and points out that official statistics on poverty or exclusion “still have difficulty capturing this reality.”
Caritas Portugal warns of cases that remain invisible in official poverty statistics and highlights the “very relevant recent trend” of increased requests for help from immigrants.
In the second edition of the study “Poverty and Social Exclusion in Portugal: a view of Caritas”, which is presented today, Caritas portrait the national reality taking into account those who live in poverty and refers how, in recent years, “the issue of immigration has become increasingly central to public debate in Portugal”.
The institution points out that it has found a “very relevant recent trend [que] It is the increase in requests for support by immigrants “and stresses that official statistics on poverty or exclusion” still have difficulty capturing this reality, “but that it is present in the” day-to-day of the Caritas Network “.
“The official statistics at European level result from surveys to people who live strictly in habitual family lodgings, based on the information of censuses. Thus do not include people in no shelter, prisons, nationals or migrants living in temporary housing or nose communities,” says Caritas.
“Several of these cases, invisible in official statistics, resort to the support of the Caritas network distributed across the country,” he adds.
For Caritas, there are two statistics that should be taken into account in the case of immigrants: the number of foreigners with legal status of resident and the number of foreigners due to others registered in social security.
It says, on the one hand, that “foreign workers have been fundamental to sustain the increase in employment in Portugal in recent years”, but emphasizes, on the other hand, that the speed with which this has happened “has raised challenges of integration to all structures of society”, both in the labor market and the housing market, in the public network of social supports and the social and cultural structures of immigrants.
According to Caritas, available statistical data show that “immigrants have, on average, greater vulnerability to poverty and social exclusion” and that in the eurozone the severe deprivation rate of the nationals of each country was 5.3%, which compares with 12.8% in individuals with foreign citizenship.
“In contrast, in Portugal, official statistics suggest that the rate of severe material and social deprivation was identical among national and foreign (4.9%)”, but defends a more close reading of this “surprising result”, as the foreign population “does not embrace the complete reality of immigrants to live in Portugal.”
Caritas states that, for methodological reasons, only stable residence is included and integrated in the labor market and that “the situations of greater deprivation in the foreign population will not be well captured” in the inquiry carried out by the National Statistics Institute (INE).
Caritas believes, therefore, that “as official statistics begin to more reliable this reality, a greater contribution from foreigners to the risk of poverty risk and material and social deprivation in Portugal will be expected.
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