— 11 April 2023

The Easiest & Hardest Countries To Move To Have Been Ranked

Travel

— 11 April 2023

WORDS

Henry Garnett

WORDS BY
Henry Garnett

Relocating to a new country long-term is an often avoidable aspect of life that many will experience at some point or another. It can be simultaneously daunting, exciting, and confusing to pack everything you own and completely restart your life. And the difficulty also depends on exactly where you’re moving to.

With that in mind, the 2022 Internations survey asked 12,000 expats around the world to score their experiences overseas, then used that data to compile a ranked list of the easiest locations to move to based on the data collected.

Internations is an expat community group comprised of 4.5 million people in 420 cities around the world. The Internations survey asked its participants to score locations based on what it calls the “Expat Essentials Index” which takes into account four categories: digital life, housing, admin topics, and language.

The “digital life” category scores the availability of online services, ease of attaining high-speed home internet, ability to pay without cash, as well as unrestricted access to online services (e.g. social media). “Housing” takes into account both the affordability and the ease of finding a home for expats.

“Admin Topics” reveal how difficult it is to deal with each country’s local bureaucracy, open a bank account, and ease of obtaining a visa. “Language” scores both the difficulty of learning the local language, as well as the difficulty of living in the country without speaking the language.

If you’re looking to book that one-way ticket then take note of just how much stress you’ve set yourself up for with this ranked list of the easiest (and hardest) countries to move to.