From “Expat Paradise” to Urban Frictions: Lisbon and the Infrastructures of Privileged Migration

Lisbon as a Laboratory of Privileged Mobilities

Inside Lisbon’s Global Expat Summit , mobility was framed as an aspiration. Panels discussed remote work, entrepreneurial freedom, investment opportunities, and how to “relocate successfully.” Representatives from relocation companies explained visa pathways and tax advantages, influencers shared tips on “building a global lifestyle” while real estate firms promoted investment opportunities in Portugal's emerging towns and neighbourhoods. For internationally mobile professionals, Lisbon appears to be a city of opportunity and an ideal destination: sunny, safe, comparatively (!) affordable and culturally vibrant.

Outside the summit venue, a different conversation about Lisbon is unfolding. In recent years, the city has become emblematic of Europe's housing crisis. Over the last decade, rents in Portuguese cities have increased dramatically while salaries have remained relatively low. An analysis of EU data by the European Trade Union Institute found that the average cost of renting an apartment in Lisbon with up to two bedrooms is over 700 Euro more than the monthly minimum wage (920 Euros). Long-term residents have been pushed out of central neighbourhoods. Housing protests have become more frequent, with residents denouncing what many see as the transformation of Lisbon into a city designed less for its inhabitants than for global consumers. These two Lisbons are not separate stories. They are deeply connected.

The Global Expat Summit offers more than a networking event for highly mobile professionals. It provides a window into the infrastructures of privileged migration — the systems, policies, and industries that facilitate mobility for some groups while mobility for others remains heavily restricted. Looking at Lisbon through this lens allows us to ask a broader question: why and by whom are certain migrants celebrated as “global citizens” while others continue to be treated as social or political problems?

Infrastructures of Privileged Migrations

Migration is often understood as the act of crossing borders. But privileged migration today depends on much more than mobility itself. It relies on infrastructures specifically designed to make movement easy, attractive and especially profitable (for states and individuals). These migration infrastructures operate at multiple levels: At the institutional, policy level, visa schemes such as the digital nomad visa have been designed to attract remote workers with stable incomes earned abroad. Earlier initiatives, including the Golden Visa programme, linked resident rights to investment, particularly real estate (which had been banned in 2023). The Non-Habitual Resident (NHR) tax regime further enhanced Portugal’s attractiveness by offering substantial fiscal advantages to foreign residents.

At the local level, these policies are complemented by a growing ecosystem: co-living and co-working spaces that are not only selling accommodation but also community and lifestyle, a service economy increasingly oriented towards English-speaking clients, which becomes visible in the cities high density of boutique hotels and brunch cafés catering to international professionals, relocation services, international real estate platforms and housing offers specifically tailored for people who have a multi-local lifestyle and earn high salaries abroad (see Picture 1).

As such, entire sectors of the urban economy increasingly orient themselves toward globally mobile residents.

Importantly, this form of migration is rarely described as “migration”. Those arriving through these infrastructures are more commonly called “expats,” “digital nomads,” or “international professionals.” The terms matter because they signal status. While “migrant” is often associated with necessity, labour precarity, or border control, “expat” evokes choice, cosmopolitanism, and economic value. The distinction is not neutral. It reflects a hierarchy of mobility in which some movements are normalized and encouraged while others remain politically contested.

A City Reimagined for Global Consumers

Lisbon did not become an “expat hotspot” by accident. Like many cities competing in the global urban economy, it actively marketed itself as attractive to international investors, tourists, and mobile professionals. After the 2008 financial crisis, foreign investment became central to urban redevelopment strategies in Portugal. For some, these transformations brought opportunity. New businesses emerged, neighbourhoods attracted investment and Lisbon gained visibility as a global city of tourism. Yet the benefits have been unevenly distributed. Thus, what was once celebrated as urban “revitalization” is increasingly experienced as exclusion.

The tensions surrounding privileged migration therefore cannot be reduced to resentment toward foreigners themselves. Rather, they emerge from a broader transformation in how cities function. Housing is no longer treated primarily as a social good connected to local livelihoods. It increasingly operates as a global asset shaped by international purchasing power (see Picture 2).

This creates a fundamental contradiction: the same forms of mobility celebrated as opportunity can simultaneously undermine the conditions of urban life for those with fewer resources.

Toward a more reflexive debate

It would be easy to turn this into a moral story with clear villains: privileged foreigners displacing vulnerable locals. But reality is more complex. Many internationally mobile professionals are themselves responding to economic pressures, precarious labour markets, or housing crises elsewhere. They participate in systems they did not individually create. Focusing only on individual responsibility risks obscuring the structural conditions driving these transformations. As such, we need structural solutions for unequal access to housing, citizenship and mobility.

However, on an individual level, it also needs reflexivity. Being aware and attentive to power imbalances structured around different categories of difference like wealth, citizenship, race and/or gender might already make a difference how expats navigate and consume their lives in Lisbon: What would it mean for relatively privileged migrants to engage more critically with their own positionality? How can urban policies balance global attractiveness with local affordability? And can public debates move beyond simplistic binaries between “locals” and “foreigners” toward a broader discussion about housing, inequality and urban futures? Migrants' negotiation of their positionality, relative privilege and role in local transformations can already make a difference, encouraging engagement with local communities and joining forces to work on a more just city.

The Global Expat Summit ultimately reveals something larger than the experiences of mobile elites. It exposes how contemporary cities are increasingly reorganized around global mobility itself. The question is not whether privileged migration transforms urban life — it clearly does. The real question is who gets to shape those transformations, who benefits from them, and who is left negotiating their consequences. In Lisbon, that debate is no longer theoretical. It is being negotiated - in the neighbourhoods, in housing markets, and increasingly, in the everyday politics of belonging.