Angola Emigration and Immigration

Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão reached the area in 1484.[14] The previous year, the Portuguese had established relations with the Kongo, which stretched at the time from modern Gabon in the north to the Kwanza River in the south. The Portuguese established their primary early trading post at Soyo, which is now the northernmost city in Angola apart from the Cabinda exclave. Paulo Dias de Novais founded São Paulo de Loanda (Luanda) in 1575 with a hundred families of settlers and four hundred soldiers. Benguela was fortified in 1587 and became a township in 1617.

The Portuguese established several other settlements, forts and trading posts along the Angolan coast, principally trading in Angolan slaves for plantations. Local slave dealers provided a large number of slaves for the Portuguese Empire,[15] usually in exchange for manufactured goods from Europe.[16][17]

This part of the Atlantic slave trade continued until after Brazil's independence in the 1820s.

The Berlin Conference in 1884–1885 set the colony's borders, delineating the boundaries of Portuguese claims in Angola,[20] although many details were unresolved until the 1920s.[22] Trade between Portugal and its African territories rapidly increased as a result of protective tariffs, leading to increased development, and a wave of new Portuguese immigrants.

Portugal's refusal to address increasing Angolan demands for self-determination provoked an armed conflict which erupted in 1961 with the Baixa de Cassanje revolt and gradually evolved into a protracted war of independence that persisted for the next twelve years.[25] Throughout the conflict, three militant nationalist movements with their own partisan guerrilla wings emerged from the fighting between the Portuguese government and local forces, supported to varying degrees by the Portuguese Communist Party.[24][26]

The National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) recruited from Bakongo refugees in Zaire.[27] Benefiting from particularly favourable political circumstances in Léopoldville, and especially from a common border with Zaire, Angolan political exiles were able to build up a power base among a large expatriate community from related families, clans, and traditions.[28] People on both sides of the border spoke mutually intelligible dialects and enjoyed shared ties to the historical Kingdom of Kongo.[28] Though as foreigners skilled Angolans could not take advantage of Mobutu Sese Seko's state employment programme, some found work as middlemen for the absentee owners of various lucrative private ventures. The migrants eventually formed the FNLA with the intention of making a bid for political power upon their envisaged return to Angola.[28]

It is estimated that Angola was host to 12,100 refugees and 2,900 asylum seekers by the end of 2007. 11,400 of those refugees were originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who arrived in the 1970s.[126] As of 2008 there were an estimated 400,000 Democratic Republic of the Congo migrant workers,[127] at least 220,000 Portuguese,[128] and about 259,000 Chinese living in Angola.[129] 1 million Angolans are mixed race (black and white).

Since 2003, more than 400,000 Congolese migrants have been expelled from Angola.[130] Prior to independence in 1975, Angola had a community of approximately 350,000 Portuguese,[131][132] but the vast majority left after independence and the ensuing civil war. However, Angola has recovered its Portuguese minority in recent years; currently, there are about 200,000 registered with the consulates, and increasing due to the debt crisis in Portugal and the relative prosperity in Angola.[133] The Chinese population stands at 258,920, mostly composed of temporary migrants.[134] Also, there is a small Brazilian community of about 5,000 people.