The Raspberry Visa
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 1 November 2023
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The ‘Raspberry Visa’ is the colloquial name given to the Portuguese passport that workers picking berries in Western Portugal can apply for after 7 years of work. Bhrikuti Rai and Fabian Federl visit Odemira, where the raspberries are grown, to find out what life is like for the workers here and whether their dream of earning an EU passport is worth the toil. Is this system the answer to the lack of workers in the West or simply another means for the unscrupulous to exploit the hopes of migrants with dreams of a better life?
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | It's exhilarating. It's like driving a car under an avalanche, but you're taunting the avalanche rather than trying to get away from it. |
| 0:09.0 | Amazing sports stories from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:13.0 | Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:19.0 | Just like rows and rows of plastic tunnels. |
| 0:24.0 | Look, and here, obviously, also people living. |
| 0:27.0 | Yeah, we can see the clothes trying off. |
| 0:30.0 | Six months ago, this was not here. |
| 0:34.0 | This is like a couple hundred hectares. |
| 0:38.0 | It feels like the tunnels almost blend into the cloud, the hazy sky. |
| 0:46.0 | There is raspberry tunnels literally up to the horizon. |
| 0:52.0 | We're in southern Portugal, in the Algar. |
| 0:56.0 | Walking along the perimeters of a raspberry farm. |
| 0:59.0 | It's one of hundreds, maybe thousands in the region. |
| 1:03.0 | If you buy raspberries in a European supermarket, it's not unlikely they came from here. |
| 1:10.0 | Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. |
| 1:15.0 | This is the raspberry visa. |
| 1:18.0 | It's just saying that these are raspberries that we're seeing right now. |
| 1:26.0 | And these ones, they've just planted it. |
| 1:29.0 | So it takes about three months for these to grow and ripen. |
| 1:34.0 | This is about 150 people working here. |
| 1:38.0 | Nepalese, many through agencies, many through direct. |
| 1:41.0 | Indian and Bangladesh. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.