I’m going to guess that you’ve been in both countries as either tourist or expat. Do you feel that Portugal has a bigger anti foreigner feel than Sweden? Or compared to other places you might’ve visited? I have never been to Sweden and have travelled very little, I have no frame of reference honestly :).
I wouldn’t say that Portugal is anti-foreigner. They just aren’t at all used to it. It’s one of the most homogenous countries and they’ve been largely protected from mass immigration due to being a poor country, for better and worse. If you’re not ethnic European, you might get strange looks and be treated weird. Sometimes openly racist. Less so in the larger cities like Lisbon or Porto. Either way, it’s very different from a lot of the northern European countries, I think.
Sweden is completely different. They are (or were) welcoming to a fault. And that’s also caused the troubles they are currently facing. I havn’t been there as much but they are very friendly and overly welcoming to foreigners. It’s really no surprise that they appear to be having the worst time integrating foreigners. I still have some friends there and things have gone downhill very fast. Still plenty of nice rural areas though. And good wages.
I’m going to guess that you’ve been in both countries as either tourist or expat. Do you feel that Portugal has a bigger anti foreigner feel than Sweden? Or compared to other places you might’ve visited? I have never been to Sweden and have travelled very little, I have no frame of reference honestly :).
I wouldn’t say that Portugal is anti-foreigner. They just aren’t at all used to it. It’s one of the most homogenous countries and they’ve been largely protected from mass immigration due to being a poor country, for better and worse. If you’re not ethnic European, you might get strange looks and be treated weird. Sometimes openly racist. Less so in the larger cities like Lisbon or Porto. Either way, it’s very different from a lot of the northern European countries, I think.
Sweden is completely different. They are (or were) welcoming to a fault. And that’s also caused the troubles they are currently facing. I havn’t been there as much but they are very friendly and overly welcoming to foreigners. It’s really no surprise that they appear to be having the worst time integrating foreigners. I still have some friends there and things have gone downhill very fast. Still plenty of nice rural areas though. And good wages.