ABSTRACT
For the last half-a-century, Portugal has been a destination for lifestyle and sun-searching migrants originating from Northern and Central Europe (Great Britain, Germany, Holland and Sweden above all), and North America (United States and Canada), the great majority of whom have settled in very specific Portuguese coastal regions where sun and leisured lifestyle options are considered abundant, and where the cost of living, in comparison to the countries these lifestyle migrants come from, is lower. These regions include, above all, the Algarve in southern Portugal and, to a lesser extent, the Costa do Sol (Estoril/Cascais) region on the western outskirts of Lisbon. In more recent years, however, an increase in lifestyle migration to non-coastal Portuguese regions has equally been witnessed, with many of these migrants searching out isolated/unpopulated areas, inexpensive real estate opportunities and ecological lifestyle environments to settle down in. Such has been the case in a number of Portuguese interior regions.
