While physically moving abroad might be easy (depending on your passport, of course), actually feeling settled in your new home can take a while.
There could be a language barrier, or lots of bureaucracy to deal with – and that’s before you get into actually building a community of friends and regular haunts.
Thankfully, the team at expat and remote worker insurance company William Russell have crunched the numbers to work out exactly where the most welcoming countries and cities are around the globe.
“A welcoming destination is more about how easy it is to build a life once you arrive than it is about how easy it is to enter,” William Cooper, director and co-owner at William Russell, said.
“Employment access, healthcare availability, and financial stability all play a real role in whether expats feel settled within the first six to 12 months. These factors can be the difference between returning home and relocating long-term.”
The most welcoming countries in Europe for expats
William Russell has scored countries out of 10 based on six factors: Expat experience, migrant population size, foreign-born employment rates, public attitudes towards immigrants, safety, and visa openness.
Data comes from various sources, including InterNation’s Expat Insider survey, the OECD, World Bank, Global Peace Index and Henley Global.
With an overall score of 8.94 out of 10, Iceland was named the most welcoming country around the globe thanks to its high foreign-born employment rate of 84.2%, employment opportunities, straightforward administrative processes and high levels of social trust.
Second place also went to a European country – Luxembourg.
This is due to its high migrant population, with more than half of its residents coming from abroad, which means that services like banking and housing are designed to accommodate international residents, while you’re likely to work in a multilingual workplace and have coworkers with similar relocation backgrounds.
Switzerland came out in number five, with a high visa openness score of 93 and a foreign-born employment rate of 77.1%.
Hot on its tail was Ireland in sixth place, while the top 10 was rounded out by a trio of European nations: Czechia, Portugal and Austria.
The top countries: ratings out of 10
- Iceland: 8.94
- Luxembourg: 8.69
- New Zealand: 8.57
- Australia: 8.54
- Switzerland: 8.36
- Ireland: 7.89
- Colombia: 7.71
- Czechia: 7.62
- Portugal: 7.47
- Austria: 7.40
The most welcoming cities in Europe for expats
For cities, William Russell extracted data from the Happy City Index and Numbeo, looking at factors around happiness, safety, and public friendliness.
Zürich topped the rankings overall, with a high safety score of 76.7, and a low social friction score of 24.9.
Next up in Europe was Copenhagen in fourth place, followed by Munich in fifth, Prague in sixth and Warsaw in eighth.
Major cities including London, Paris and New York were notably absent from the top 10, with William Hill theorising that city scale and density can increase the sense of anonymity and make it harder to build connections.
The top cities: ratings out of 10
1. Zürich: 9.06
2= Singapore: 8.97
2= Tokyo: 8.97
4. Copenhagen: 8.72
5. Munich: 8.63
6. Prague: 7.86
7. Dubai: 7.61
8. Warsaw: 7.52
9. Seoul: 7.44
10. Hong Kong: 7.26
