asian workers

As night falls on São Teotónio, the lights are still on at the school. Three times a week, it stays open until midnight to hold classes for adults from the region, who come here at the end of a long day in the greenhouses – knowing they will need to speak some Portuguese in order to qualify for permanent residency. There are currently 500 adult students registered for night classes – almost matching the daytime intake of 600 children. Moldovan Vitali Siminionov, who picks flowers for a living, and whose two children both study at the school, joked: “They’re always correcting me saying ‘Dad, that’s not how you say it!”