Gianna Conceição stood at the front of the classroom, waiting for her grade eleven students to settle down. She held her bag, filled to the brim with her teaching materials and a large bag of candy, a farewell gift she’d bought for them as a surprise. She was nervous because she knew that soon, everything would change. She held her breath.

“This is my last day teaching at this school, but before I leave, I want to tell you a story. It’s been a long journey for me to get to this classroom,” she began.

Her voice faltered slightly, as she started recounting her life: as a young quiet girl from São Paulo, working her way through university, her first teaching contract, and the game she designed to teach children how to read Braille. She talked about her children, her eldest son's trajectory with learning disabilities and schizophrenia – and her most testing times, as an immigrant, “I dreamt of being a teacher, I’ve crossed a border and I’m here, teaching you. So when things get hard, don’t give up; believe in your potential.”

When she was done speaking, the class erupted in applause, and she saw some of her students tearing up. Afterwards, amidst the chatter, some came up to her, frustrated, asking why she had to leave; others asked her when she would be back.

Gianna, 47, found these questions difficult to answer. This was not her first time leaving a beloved teaching job. Once class was over, she collected her belongings, and amidst the August heat, made her way to the train station where she scrambled to find a seat. The train lurched forward and started running. She looked outside but her mind was elsewhere, preoccupied and thinking, where to next?

While Gianna journeyed home, across the country, school directors and teaching unions were sounding the alarm. This year, 146,000 students across Portugal were left without a teacher due to a nationwide shortage that shows no signs of slowing down.

She is one of thousands of qualified professionals who have moved to Portugal in the last few years hoping to join the Portuguese workforce. But for many migrants across Portugal, the prospects are not promising: almost four in ten college-educated migrants with degrees are working in jobs they are overqualified for. This includes everything from nurses working as care workers to teachers working as cleaners.

An investigation led by Lighthouse Reports with the Financial Times, El País, Unbias the News and PÚBLICO based on an analysis of the European Labour Force Survey, reveals that, across Europe, migrants are excluded from the labour market and end up unemployed or overqualified for jobs at significantly higher rates than natives. This phenomenon, known as brain waste, comes at a significant cost to European economies. In Portugal, a bureaucratic degree recognition process acts as a gatekeeper, preventing migrants from accessing jobs and pushing many towards re-education.

Gianna recalls the last class she taught in Brazil years ago, when she decided to leave her job. Her eldest son was finishing high school when his learning disability became an impediment at school. For one year, she sat side by side with him at the back of the classroom, coaching him through his school tasks, until one day, her eyes clouded with tears, she watched him walk up the stage at graduation.

As a university student, Gianna was top of her class, “it was the only option, I had to succeed or choose another path”, she says. Years later, she would go on to earn a postgraduate degree in special needs education.

For years, she’d prioritised her career and kids over everything else, so when she met her current partner, she didn’t expect much to change. It was the height of the Covid-19 lockdown, and he was living in Portugal; their pandemic love story was even showcased on a Portuguese daytime show. Not long after, she was boarding a flight to Lisbon, assured that across Europe, teachers were in demand.

Portugal will need 30,000 new teachers until 2030

It is estimated that approximately 4,000 teachers are due to retire this year in Portugal, the highest number in a decade. In the meantime,the country is expected to need more than 30,000 new teachers by 2030.

According to the EU Commission’s education and training monitoring report, Portugal fares worse than many of its European neighbours with an ageing teaching workforce largely to blame.

In her first year in Portugal, Gianna worked cleaning jobs, briefly at a café, and finally as a carer for two elderly women. In the evenings, she’d read about the Portuguese school curriculum, trying to make up for time lost.

In Portugal, she tried her best to adjust, but she longed for her teaching days. Back in São Paulo, working as a Portuguese teacher, Gianna was known for having a handle on the high school kids some of her colleagues called 'difficult’. She fondly remembers one student, a 14-year-old boy who commuted every day to school from a nearby shelter. He had been held back a year and showed no interest in class. One day, Gianna sat down with him and learned he had a talent for drawing. Within a few days, she had organised the class to produce its own newspaper and encouraged him to be in charge of the visual design. She asked him to come up with some didactic games for younger students. Suddenly, they were speaking the same language.

“It was a small thing, but he felt valued. He started to become more dedicated and ended up passing that school year.”

Data analysed by Lighthouse Reports and PÚBLICO reveals that migrants with an education degree are 10% more likely to report being overeducated for their current jobs than natives with an education degree.

The consequences of growing under-resourced schools have been well documented and range from a decline in average academic abilities to widening inequality gaps and a rise in dropout rates. Although Portugal’s school dropout rate has declined over the last two decades, last year, it rose from 6.5% to 8%.

The Mirage of Degree Recognition

To have any hope of making it back to the classroom, migrant teachers must get their teaching degree recognised through a process called “specific recognition”, which involves finding a Portuguese bachelor’s program that is identical to a person’s original university degree. Through this process, university modules and credits must be equivalent in length and content. The request for recognition is made to individual universities, who set a price tag on this process. Once recognised, a foreign degree is considered “equal in rights” to a Portuguese degree.

With a bachelor's degree in Portuguese and English language, and a separate one in Pedagogy, Gianna decided to recognise her language degree. When months later, she finally received recognition, she was thrilled. But what she did not know then was that as a foreign teacher, it did not grant her eligibility to teach.

In Brazil, Gianna was the lead on putting together a school play that, in part, was designed to engage hard-to-reach students. The theme was magical fairies. She rallied the entire school community. Mothers brought sewing machines to school, where they spent hours making costumes. Young students huddled together after school to make life-size flowers made of recycled cardboard. Arts students built giant multi-coloured Tsuru birds - a species common to Japan - out of tulle, a nod to the school’s diversity and Japanese-descendent community. On the day of the show, the flowers and birds hung from the back of a makeshift stage, overlooking the school courtyard. The regional secretary of education came to attend, and in the audience, Gianna was beaming.

Under current rules, Brazilian teachers are required to prove their education background through a procedure called “professional recognition” which requires further paperwork, none of which recognises Gianna’s work experience back in Brazil. Amongst the pre-conditions to begin the process is an official document from the Brazilian state or federal education authorities recognising a teacher’s professional qualifications. The Portuguese Ministry of Education may also request “compensatory measures”, such as further studies or internships, although these requests vary on a case-by-case basis.

“It’s frustrating. I got a specific recognition of my literature degree from a university in Porto. I have a document saying my degree is equal to the one granted by that university, and in fact, any Portuguese person with that exact same degree can teach. But I can’t.”

Currently, Portuguese nationals with a bachelor’s degree and no prior teaching background are eligible to teach.

For months, Gianna agonised over what decision to make. She joined a WhatApp group with over four hundred other Brazilian teachers in Portugal, many of whom shared similar worries. In the group, she mostly heard of teachers having their professional recognition denied - all of which sent her into a spiral of worry.

For those working on the ground, the current degree recognition system is failing, leaving qualified foreign professionals in uncertainty.

Cátia Vinagre and Joao Mota are two locals heading the only municipal center in Portugal dedicated to integrating migrants. In recent years, they’ve assisted in the degree recognition processes of doctors, engineers, and lawyers, some of whom have been waiting for a response for over two years. They believe the problem with the current process lies in the absence of strict procedures for institutions to follow.

“Our degree recognition law is actually quite open, but the problem is that the way it is practised is completely different from what is legislated. There are a series of obstacles that prevent people from recognising their diplomas, like requiring documentation that isn't in the law. What we are seeing is universities deferring to their autonomy and not facilitating the process.”

While some universities might ask for €600 to analyse a case (Portugal’s minimum salary is €820), costs can run up to €1,500, a barrier for many migrants and refugees arriving in the country.

The only exception to this is holders of EU and U.S. degrees who are entitled to “automatic recognition” at a standard €31.50 fee.

Beyond the high costs, the decision to request specific recognition comes with risks. If a university decides not to recognise a degree, migrants are barred from appealing to any university in the country. Fees are also not refunded.

Recognition process lacks transparency

For many teachers, the way in which degree recognition decisions are made lacks transparency.

Recently, a group of teachers decided to approach Thiago Vieira, a lawyer based in Porto, after having their professional recognition denied. Now, he is leading a collective lawsuit that claims the education body has failed to comply with the principle of equality underpinning the degree recognition law.

“We’ve witnessed that there is total discretion within the Directorate-General for School Administration (DGAE) to do things outside what has been regulated. The code of administrative processes states that all cases need to be analysed equally and this is not what is happening. In some instances, universities request documents from Brazilian institutions that don't even exist.

It was only a few months later, in September 2023, that Gianna had reason to hope. A decree recognising the severity of the teacher shortage was announced, and among other measures, it stated that teachers without their professional recognition would be eligible for temporary contracts in understaffed schools.

When the call for teachers was launched, it took her less than a day to upload her application onto the platform. Then, she waited.

Brain waste pushes many out of their profession forever

The problem of brain waste shows no signs of improvement. An increasing number of migrants are choosing to come to Portugal, but the country lacks the mechanisms to integrate people into the job market. Portugal’s foreign population stood at more than one million in 2023, more than double 2018’s figure of 480,000.

Data analysed shows that migrants in Portugal without degree recognition have a six-in-ten chance of being overqualified for their jobs, this is typical for Southern Europe but higher than in the rest of Europe. College educated migrants in Portugal who are overqualified for their jobs often end up working as shop salespersons, office clerks or domestic, hotel and office cleaners.

In her first year living in Portugal, Grabiela Pacheco, 41, remembers hiding during every lunch break to cry, while working as a fishmonger at a national supermarket chain. “I remember feeling completely low and desolate, like all my career had been in vain,” she says.

For ten years, Grabiela, who has a degree in primary school teaching, worked as a preschool teacher in Venezuela. Her husband ran a sound equipment business, and her days mostly consisted of going to work, picking up her child from school, and having her weekly lunch with friends. When the social situation in Caracas began to deteriorate, she hesitated to leave. But when her family was held ransom in a violent attempt to rob her house, she knew she had no option.

“I felt like I couldn’t share with anyone what I was feeling. I cried at work so that I could go home and put on a brave face for my husband and my child because I knew they were struggling too. I had to be my family’s support system.”

It has been five years since Grabiela arrived, but she has yet to work in her field. This year, she took a job as a cleaner at a preschool, where she is also tasked with overseeing children during lunch breaks. It’s the closest she’s gotten to her old job in years. She earns €570 at the school, so in order to try to reach minimum wage each month, she does cleaning and laser hair removal jobs on weekends. She also works in an after-school program during school holidays.

“Several times now, the school has been in need of preschool teachers, but I’m never considered. Even though some parents already know me. Sometimes, I’m the first person opening the doors in the morning and the one dropping off the kids with their parents in the afternoon.”

Grabiela is now fluent in Portuguese. She has received recognition for her primary school degree but not her professional recognition.

While migrants struggle to navigate the system’s bureaucracy, Portuguese universities benefit from loose regulations, which allow them to profit through the same system they are tasked with overseeing. They can withhold recognition and suggest people take on further studies, paying full tuition. Of all countries, Portugal is the leader in integrating college educated migrants into the workforce simply by making them re-enroll in university.

For Jairo Maia, a 48-year-old teacher with degrees in law and philosophy, the question of whether to apply for specific recognition hangs over his head. In 2020, Jairo and his wife, a primary school teacher, arrived in Lisbon with their three-year-old son. Earlier this year, he worked temporarily as a teacher after receiving his 'level recognition'—a more affordable recognition process that validates one’s studies under Portuguese law.

He got a temporary teaching contract that ended in August, and since then, has been working ten to twelve hour shifts as an Uber driver.

At the moment, the prices to request the recognition he needs are way beyond what he can afford. If he were to re-enrol in university and get a master’s degree, this would take time away from work and drastically reduce his paycheck.

In addition, master’s degree programs for international students come at a cost, as prices can go up to €5,000 a year. Under temporary contracts, a foreign teacher's earnings depend on their hours of work, which may sometimes be less than the minimum wage.

“There comes a moment when the country puts you through so many difficulties you start to think about giving up. All of these obstacles are painful because you understand you are not valued. I’d like to have some stability, all we want is some stability in our jobs.”

But even for Brazilian teachers who are granted permission to work and are hired, job security is non-existent. Last month, over a dozen teachers working in Portuguese schools were abruptly notified that their contracts had been cancelled. In some instances, teachers who had held positions in schools for two years saw their lives upended, when overnight, they were dismissed.

“Many teachers have families, young children and rent due and are now in a very difficult situation,” explains Daniela Neves, a lawyer who has since taken up the cases of teachers who have decided to seek justice in court.

According to Neves, the Directorate-General for School Administration (DGAE) argues that the documentation these teachers shared for their applications did not suffice to prove their professional qualifications. She believes these notifications violate the rights of these teachers and of students, who are again left in limbo.

“People were hired through national platforms, who told them their degree was adequately recognised. The directors of these schools said these teachers complied, they went through interview processes and worked in these schools in some instances for years,” says Rodrigo Sepriano, a lawyer working on the case.

Government acknowledges crisis, but offers little relief

Gianna was ecstatic the morning she received an e-mail saying she had been accepted to temporarily fill a teaching position. She’d been researching learning materials when the notification popped up on the screen, and she jumped from her desk, running to her partner,

“My heart was racing, I was shouting, I got it, I got it!”

But when the first day of school came, she worried about how she would be received. In her first week of work, she often found herself sitting alone in the corner of the teachers’ room, planning her classroom schedule.

“I think all of us (foreigners) are apprehensive when arriving at the schools. I was the new Brazilian teacher - it’s not lost on me that there is some prejudice when people see a Brazilian teacher giving Portuguese language classes. I was very aware of that.”

Gianna had been assigned to a school on the outskirts of Lisbon, which was struggling with shortages, filling in for a teacher who had just retired. It did not take long before parents came up to thank her, they had been worried their child would spend the school year without a teacher.

In total, she worked 12 hours a week, just enough to make minimum wage.

But as the end of August approached, so did Gianna’s temporary contract, and she was restless. Gianna knew that if she was let go, many of her students could be left without a teacher at the start of the new school year. She dreaded being out of work.

It was around the same time that the Portuguese government announced a decree introducing 'exceptional measures' that further eased the rules for Portuguese nationals to teach. The decree highlighted the difficulties in finding qualified staff to fill teaching positions and argued that the national teacher shortage, “posed a threat to the rights of children and youth, leaving thousands of students without access to fundamental education.'"

A few weeks after Gianna was left unemployed, and just before the start of the school year in September, the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation (MECI) launched a drive to integrate foreign teachers into the Portuguese school system. It said it intended to hire 200 foreign teachers as part of a program towards integration. The program claimed that this hiring would come hand in hand with a simplification of the degree recognition process, but did not specify how. Of the 129 requests for recognition, 10 were approved.

The government also announced that it would begin a drive to bring retired Portuguese teachers back to work.

For Pedro Gois, scientific director of Portugal’s Migration Observatory, it is crucial that the country does more to retain people who are arriving, “This has not been a political priority, and because of that we have lost a lot of human value, a lot of skills,” he says. Gois believes that even though there should be a “layer of security” before people are allowed to work, “there is an excess of bureaucracy and protectionism.”

He adds, “In reality, we are lucky that people choose Portugal, and that in some ways with our growing migration we are compensating for the exit of many Portuguese professionals who are doing exactly the same in other countries - looking for opportunities.”

A fresh start, again

In mid-November, three months after being dismissed from her teaching job, Gianna was sitting in her living room, anxiously refreshing her inbox, when a notification made her stop in her tracks. It was an email saying she’d been accepted to take a position at a new state school in Lisbon.

She couldn't believe it. After all her worries, she’d finally be back in the classroom.

In the first weeks of her new teaching job, a head teacher heard about Gianna's background in special needs education and the game she had designed to teach Braille. The teacher had been working with a partially blind student and now asked Gianna to take on an extra role of support. They asked the school’s direction for permission, given the character of Gianna’s contract. Once approved, she was thrilled.

“I am incredibly happy. I am back to doing what I love, but still, that does not exclude the fact that for so many of us, this process is like walking on eggshells. I won’t lie, I worry a lot.”

Eventually, in a few months, Gianna’s contract will be up for renewal again. Whether she will get a new job, a more permanent position, or end up unemployed depends on how the Portuguese government chooses to adjust its degree recognition policies in the coming year. But regardless, she does not plan on giving up.

“When I tell my students, you can do it, you can do anything you put your mind to, I need those words to mean something outside the classroom, in my life too. So that is what keeps me steady, insisting to exercise my profession today, here, in Portugal.”