The email arrived at 9:14 a.m. on a Tuesday, which felt like a cruel amount of precision for something so blunt. "We are restructuring." "Your role has been impacted." "A member of the People team will be in touch."
I was sitting in my rented flat in Alfama with a coffee I had just made and a day I had already planned. By 9:16 I was staring at the confirmation and trying to work out whether my Portuguese residency status was about to become a very expensive piece of paper.
That was the odd thing about getting laid off abroad. It was not just a career problem. It was an immigration problem, a health insurance problem, a bank account problem, and a "where do I actually live now" problem, all at once, on a Tuesday morning, with no warning.
The visa panic
My residency had been approved on the basis that I could support myself in Portugal from foreign income. That income had come from my employer, a UK-based tech company that had just decided I was surplus. The paperwork did not say "you must remain employed by this specific company," but it did depend on me continuing to meet the financial conditions behind my permit.
So the first question was not "how do I find a new job." It was "how long do I have before my legal right to be here becomes questionable."
I looked for a clear answer and could not find one. The guidance was vague. My immigration lawyer, when I eventually got through to her, said the honest answer was "it depends." That phrase became a theme.1
Where HR stopped being useful
The company had a severance process. It was designed for employees in the UK. They offered a standard severance package, which was fine. They provided a letter confirming the end of employment, which was fine. What they did not do, and clearly had not thought about, was address the overseas bit.
Nobody mentioned how severance would be taxed in Portugal. Nobody mentioned whether I still qualified for Portuguese social security or if my coverage had ended the moment my contract did. Nobody mentioned that my employer-sponsored international health insurance would lapse at the end of the month.
I asked all of these questions. The responses came slowly and without confidence. I got the strong impression that I was the first person in their overseas layoff round who had actually asked.
The insurance gap
This was the scariest part, and I say that as someone who is not easily scared by admin.
My employer-sponsored health cover ended 30 days after my last working day. Portuguese public healthcare was technically accessible through my residency, but accessing it required a step I had not completed because I had been relying on private cover through work. Private insurance purchased independently in Portugal was available, but every provider I contacted wanted medical history in Portuguese, a fiscal number, and proof of address, all of which were fine, but dealing with them while simultaneously managing a redundancy, a visa review, and a fraying sense of security was a lot.
For about six weeks I was in a gap. Technically insured through a patchwork of a remaining travel policy and goodwill. Not a situation anyone should be in.
How the severance got messy
Severance arrived in sterling. I banked in Portugal partly in euros and partly through a UK account I had kept open. The exchange rate moved against me between the date the severance was calculated and the date it landed. That was not a large amount, but it was the sort of thing that adds irritation to an already irritating situation.
Portuguese tax on the severance was its own question. My accountant in Lisbon confirmed that because I was tax-resident in Portugal, at least part of the severance could be taxable there depending on the applicable exemptions and how the payment was characterised. The answer also depended on how long I had been employed and whether any of it overlapped with UK obligations. It took three separate conversations to get to an answer I trusted.
The part that is not administrative
The logistical stuff was hard. The emotional stuff was worse in a way I did not expect.
I had moved to Lisbon as a person with a job, a salary, a reason to be there that I could explain in one sentence. Without the job, I suddenly felt like I needed to justify my own presence. Not to the government specifically, but to myself, to my landlord, to the people I had started building a life around.
Other expats I spoke to after the layoff described the same thing. The job was not just an income source. It was the structural reason your entire overseas life made sense. Remove it and all the other pieces, the flat, the visa, the social circle, the daily routine, suddenly feel provisional.
What stabilized the situation
I stayed. That decision came down to three things. One, I had savings that covered about four months. Two, my landlord agreed to keep the lease month-to-month rather than forcing a new term. Three, I got freelance work within five weeks, partly through contacts I had made in Lisbon and partly through former colleagues.
What I would tell someone in the same position: move fast on the insurance. That is the urgent one because health emergencies do not wait for you to sort your admin. Move fast on understanding your visa obligations. And talk to an accountant in the country where you live before you spend the severance, because how it is taxed may not be what you assume.
And if your company offers international remote work without also preparing for international layoffs, that gap is going to land on you. Not on them.
January 2026 update
If you are dealing with this in Portugal now, the administrative landscape is different from late 2023. Residence-permit processing now runs through AIMA, and Portugal has clearer remote-work pathways than it did a few years ago. What has not changed is the practical order of operations: confirm your immigration status early, replace insurance before a gap opens, and get Portuguese tax advice before treating severance or freelance income as straightforward.
1 Accuracy note: this article is general editorial commentary based on publicly available rules and typical expat experiences, not Portuguese legal, immigration, tax, employment, or insurance advice. Requirements and outcomes vary by visa or permit type, nationality, source of income, insurer, tax residence position, and the timing of rule changes. Consult a qualified Portugal-based professional for advice on your specific case.