ABSTRACT
[In the early 2000s] immigration issues were not a priority in the research agenda of academics and little of that knowledge was being applied to public policies. We were receiving a large flow of Ukrainians, Brazilians and others; we had had a radical change of conditions and of the social groups of immigration. It was necessary to study and understand this immigration, which no longer was just the traditional coming of Africans. It was also urgent to understand how we, Portuguese, were to rethink ourselves in the face of this reality. … I think the Observatory on Immigration would make a good service if it could further deepen the question of intercultural dialogue of which Portugal has been a pioneer, and could again be, in the sense of opening a new phase of that dialogue, because that is the future of humanity.
