This article applies a systems approach to the analysis of multiple circuits of labor migration that emerged in the Algarve, southern Portugal, from the late eighteenth century to the mid 1900s, and their connections. Over time Algarvian migrants participated in three main systems of migration: internal migration and migration to southern Spain and Gibraltar, transatlantic migration to the Americas and Africa – especially to Argentina – and migration to northern Europe. Rather than an abrupt break with a sedentary past, the article shows how the beginnings of transatlantic migration at the turn of the century were the result of modification and adaptation of existing strategies of labor migration.