Thoughts on returning to Brazil

2025-09-27

tl;dr I'm not happy about it, but I'm also not overly negative, as it makes sense career and financially-wise.

After living in Portugal for 8 years, I'll be moving back to Brazil over the next few months. I don't really want to, but there's not much I can do as an immigrant. If I were an European citizen, I could do what every other Portuguese does: look for better-paying jobs in better-paying countries. But alas, being not from this continent, I have freedom of movement in the EU to be a tourist but not a worker, so my choices are either going back to my country or accept that half (or more) of my wages will be for rent and nothing else¹. Damn it be overtourism and the government that prioritizes tourists instead of its working class.

In any case, I'm a bit professionally "stranded" in Portugal due to that: I don't have money to travel to other countries and go on gaming events, so it's hard to expand my network of contacts outside of LinkedIn — which I use reluctantly. And, as an immigrant without a local support network, I'm just a couple of bad months away from becoming homeless should the market go through any unusual shift. I'd rather not live with this kind of stress looming over me. So much so that I don't plan on turning on the heating this late fall and early winter, just so I can save enough money for the plane ticket (and I'll have to pay extra to transport my guitar² and a 10 kg synthesizer³).

On the other hand, life in Brazil is... hard, to say the least. Brazil is a very low-trust society, meaning you always have to spend energy to basically fight for everything that just works in other countries. Gig economy has always been the norm there (and I think that's true for most of the developing world), and people always act as if you're trying to fool them. Brazilians are very warm and friendly, but being friendly is not the same as being friends. I'll be returning better than when I left, though, earning in euros and dollars, which puts me in a better position — financially — than most of the country. However, besides rent, the overall cost of living there is more or less equivalent to Portugal, it's just the country's minimum wage that's too damn low for proper living.

But, on the positive side, São Paulo has a lot of industry-related game events, from giants like Gamescom LATAM to smaller ones, like the ones organized by the Firma Gamedev. There's also a small community of game localizers that's been self-organizing, and some of them have been meeting in São Paulo. Some are old friends, some are people I've been chatting recently through the internet. Career-wise, it's a move that makes sense.

The funniest part, though? By moving back to Brazil, I'll be able to save enough money to go to events in Europe every year, something I can't do while living in Portugal, despite being closer and having cheaper flights. Yay capitalism, I guess?

Anyway, this is a reluctant move, and it's not going to be cheap (I'll be shipping, by boat, lots of stuff I can't take on a plane), but it makes sense in the current situation. Being an extreme introvert with very low energy for social interaction, I'll definitely miss Europe's peace and quietness — Brazilian culture has a lot of "let me touch you", it's very "let's party all day". There, everything is too high-energy for me, despite being a born and raised Brazilian, hah⁴.

At least São Paulo is a proper large multicultural city, and I miss living in one. I grew up on the countryside, but always preferred large cities than living close to nature. Large crowds are great for hermits who like to live anonymously, unlike living in a small town where everyone knows you as "the dude who leaves his house only once a month and doesn't talk to anyone and probably made a deal with the devil". Haha...

So. 8 years away. I wonder how much has changed in the fabric of society during this time, and if I still have my street smarts to survive there. I guess we'll see.

#rambling