Emigration policies, perceptions, and practices of the returns management during the Portuguese Dictatorship (1945-1974)

This article aims to analyse how the return of emigrants (or their intention to return) was conceived by Estado Novo. Studies on return have focused on the period after 25th April 1974 and, although after the Second World War there were movements of return, it is considered that there was no clear return policy.

The purpose of this article is to show that, despite the lack of this policy, the question of the return was present in the thinking and institutional actions of the Portuguese dictatorship. Using historical sources, it is intended to demonstrate, on the one hand, that the rationality applied in the management of legal exits from 1945 onwards reveals a concern with managing the flow of desired and undesired returns. On the other hand, emigration to European countries made it possible to reconsider the role of returnees, within the framework of changes in the institutional mentality about their usefulness in the society of origin, a vision that, even today, marks that of the Portuguese State on the return of emigrants.