In the case of countries such as India, Nepal, Bangladesh or Pakistan, “although these workers can access, in a situation of legal residence and contributory inclusion, the benefits provided for in the Portuguese system, the absence or insufficiency of international coordination mechanisms limits the portability of the rights acquired in situations of return, re-emigration or circular mobility”, can be read in the study.

Portugal's bilateral agreements

In the document, the authors survey Portugal's bilateral agreements in the social security area, which favour countries with a tradition of migration to Portugal, such as Brazil or Cape Verde, rather than considering new places of origin.

These agreements “are not merely technical administrative coordination devices, but instruments with political, institutional and distributive relevance”, because they allow “the totalization of contribution periods, the export of certain benefits and the articulation between different national systems” and function, in fact, “as selective mechanisms of social inclusion, structuring the conditions of access to protection along transnational migratory trajectories”.

Political options

In a document called “Mapping social protection beyond borders: bilateral Social Security agreements in Portugal”, the authors consider that the choice of countries “reflects political options, institutional asymmetries and different conceptions of social citizenship, producing protection hierarchies strongly dependent on the national origin of migrants”.

The largest foreign community in Portugal is of Brazilian origin (574,195 people), followed by Angola, India, Cape Verde, Nepal, Bangladesh, Guinea-Bissau, Ukraine, São Tomé and Príncipe, Pakistan, United Kingdom, Italy, France, China and Germany, with the non-national population representing 14 percent of the total.

In recent years, flows have emerged “from countries for which transnational social protection remains non-existent, limited or insufficiently developed”.

In the mapping carried out, the authors distinguish several types of social protection agreements, not only those related to old-age, disability or survivor pensions, but also benefits for illness, health care, maternity and paternity, family expenses, work accidents and occupational diseases.

Fulfill requirements

Of the countries that meet most of the requirements, Brazil and Cape Verde stand out, but, “in contrast, immigrants from countries with restricted or non-existent agreements face a significant discontinuity in their social protection” outside of Portugal and “this situation is particularly relevant for communities that have gained weight in recent Portuguese migratory geography, namely from South Asia, such as India, Nepal, Bangladesh or Pakistan”.

This inequality is not felt with regard to Portuguese emigrants, where “bilateral Social Security agreements ensure, in a relatively consistent way, the portability of old-age, disability and survivor pensions”, with instruments that “allow the totalization of contribution periods carried out in different countries, reducing the risk of total loss of rights in the final phase of the life cycle”.

But even in these cases, protection is “incomplete given contemporary forms of mobility, marked by precariousness, circularity and non-linear contributory trajectories”.

Criticism of the European Union

In the document, the authors also criticise the lack of access of non-European immigrants to bilateral social protection, due to the requirements of the EU itself.

The EU is a kind of “advanced social protection club, in which full inclusion is legally guaranteed, but externally restricted” to citizens of third countries, and shows “inequality of treatment”, which feeds “expectations, perceptions of injustice and institutional frustrations”.

The “foreign contributory universe increased significantly between 2015 and 2025, as did the amount of contributions paid, generating a record positive net balance in 2025” in Portugal, showing that the social protection of migrants “cannot be seen as a peripheral cost, but as a central dimension of social cohesion”.

Therefore, the authors argue, bilateral agreements are “strategic elements of public policy, essential to guarantee contributory justice, social integration and institutional trust in a social state model increasingly dependent on international mobility”, especially because a “selective and fragmented strategy tends to reproduce inequalities in access to transnational social citizenship."