Hardest Countries To Move To As An Expat

Relocating to a new country can be one of the most challenging and stressful experiences a person can go through. While discovering new places and meeting new people is exciting, there’s a long list of practical obstacles to overcome before the move even begins.

Applying for visas, organising health insurance, shipping your belongings, navigating cultural differences and more… the emigration to-do list isn’t one for the faint-hearted.

What’s often overlooked during the planning process is just how much the destination itself can influence the difficulty of relocating. Some countries have well-established expat communities that make settling in easier, while others offer lower living costs making it easier to achieve a better quality of life.

We reveal the hardest and easiest countries to move to as an expat. Using data from sources including the United Nations, OECD and Numbeo, we compare common destinations to highlight which countries are the most, and least, expat-ready, helping you prepare for a smoother move abroad.

What makes a country difficult to move to?

Moving abroad isn’t just about choosing where you’d like to live, and not all countries make immigration easy for foreigners. In practice, how difficult it is to move abroad is shaped by a combination of visa requirements, affordability and how easily newcomers are able to integrate once they arrive.

To compare countries fairly, we looked at popular expat destinations through these key areas that tend to have the biggest impact on how easy or difficult moving abroad can be:

Visa requirements
Affordability
Employment conditions
Expat communities
Ease of integration
English language proficiency

Visa requirements can change and may differ depending on individual circumstances, so it’s important to research the specific rules that apply to your situation and be aware that some destinations have higher rejection rates or stricter entry criteria than others.

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Which are the hardest countries to move to?

When examining the most difficult countries to move to, several stood out due to a range of combined challenges.

Although very different in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), culture, and geography, Indonesia, Japan, and Lithuania rank highest on our list as the three hardest countries to emigrate to. However, only Indonesia has a difficulty score of over 7/10.

1/ Indonesia

Difficulty score: 7.57/10

Indonesia ranks as the most challenging country in the study for prospective expats. It records the lowest expat population share of all destinations analysed, with just 0.2% of residents born abroad, and offers the fewest job listings at only 9 per 100,000 people – around 38 times below the cross-country average.

This combination of limited work opportunities and a very small expat community means newcomers may have fewer support networks and are more likely to need employment in place before relocating.

Notably, Indonesia’s difficulty score is driven almost entirely by two pillars (job availability and expat population), making it an outlier among the top 10, where most countries have a broader mix of contributing factors.

2/ Japan

Difficulty score: 6.48/10

Japan ranks as the second most challenging country to move to, despite a very cheap visa cost. Flying to Japan from the UK is very expensive, with a cost of £899, which is over £350 more than the second most expensive destination and more than five times the national average.

The language barrier can also be an issue; Japan has one of the lowest English proficiency rates, at 454/1000 on the EF English Proficiency Index, which is lower than the global average of 619/1000. Japanese and English are especially far apart, using different writing systems and grammars, which can make it more challenging to learn compared to some European languages.

3/ Lithuania

Difficulty score: 6.35/10

The third trickiest country to move to is the Baltic state of Lithuania, making it the trickiest country to move to in Europe. The country has a higher-than-average unemployment rate of 7.5%, which is the sixth-highest among the countries studied. Some Lithuanians can earn as much on state benefits as they would on low-paid jobs in the country, resulting in an ‘employment trap’.

Furthermore, despite the need for foreign workers to fill this gap, Lithuania has a low ease of integration score of 37/100 (lower than the global average of 52). Much of this is a result of a hostile attitude towards migrants following the 2021 migration crisis, when a state of emergency was declared in the country.

The top 10 most difficult countries to move to

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What are the easiest countries to move to?

Germany is the easiest country to move to

While Indonesia, Japan, and Lithuania are the most difficult countries to move to, our research also reveals the other end of the spectrum.

Globally, Germany takes the crown as the easiest country to move to, thanks to cheap visas (£66) and flights (£24), followed by Luxembourg and Sweden.

The easiest countries to move to by factor

Fastest visa processing time

The UAE, India, and Thailand have the fastest visa processing times, at just 0.3 months, compared to an average of 2.1 months.

Cheapest visa

By far the cheapest visa to purchase is Japan’s, which costs £15, almost twenty times lower than the national average.

Lowest cost of living

India has the lowest cost of living, but also the lowest average wage.

Highest average wage

Luxembourg has the highest average wage and the highest number of job listings.

Highest expat population

Almost three-quarters of the Qatari population are expats, the most of anywhere in the world.

Highest English language proficiency

The Netherlands has the highest English proficiency of any country where it is not the first language.

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Key factors that make some countries harder to move to for expats

1/ Visas

Visa rules are often the first major barrier for prospective expats. Processing times and application fees vary widely, shaping how quickly and affordably someone can relocate.

Here, we look at the countries that score highest on factors related to securing and purchasing a visa.

Which country has the longest estimated visa processing time?

Australian visas can take 10 months to process, which is by far the longest visa processing time among the countries studied, half a year longer than any other country. In 2023, over 19,000 people emigrated from the UK to Australia, making it one of the most popular destinations for British expats.

Which country has the highest visa cost?

Australia has the most expensive visa

In addition to having the longest visa processing time, Australia’s visa is also the most expensive. Only two nations have costs over £1,000, and Australia far exceeds this figure, as its visa costs £1,589, which is almost six times more expensive than the global average of £277.

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2/ Affordability

The financial realities of moving abroad can differ sharply between countries. By analysing flight prices, cost of living, salaries and job-market stability, we can highlight where expats may face greater upfront or long-term costs.

Which country is the most expensive to fly to from London?

The cost of a one-way flight from London to Japan is £899, by far the most expensive of any country studied.

This is somewhat unsurprising given the distance between London and Tokyo is almost 6,000 miles as the crow flies. However, some countries that are even greater distances away have much cheaper flights, meaning that Japan’s very high price is somewhat of an outlier.

Which country has the highest cost of living?

The most expensive country to live in is the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, one of the smallest nations in the world. The landlocked European nation has a cost of living score (compiled from numerous price factors) of 73.5/100, almost 50% higher than the global average of 51.2/100.

Which country has the lowest average salary?

India has the lowest average salary

The average annual salary in India is just US$2,650 per annum, more than ten times lower than the global average of US$37,765, and significantly less than the minimum wage in Britain.

However, India’s population includes a large number of unskilled workers, and the majority of skilled expat jobs will pay significantly higher than this.

Which country has the highest unemployment rate?

Spain has the highest unemployment rate among the countries studied. The unemployment rate in Spain is 11.4%, more than double the global average of 5.4%. Additionally, it is one of only two countries (the other being Greece) with an unemployment rate in double figures.

Which country has the fewest job listings?

Indonesia’s total of 9 job listings per 100,000 people is 38x less than the global average. Across all the countries studied, the average number of job listings per 100,000 people was 337.8, indicating that expats without a job lined up may struggle to find work here.

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3/ Expat community and integration

Settling into a new country is easier when there’s a sizeable expat community, strong integration systems, and a higher level of English proficiency.

Assessing these social and cultural indicators can help reveal where newcomers may find adjustment more challenging, preparing them for the challenges they could face soon after moving to a new country.

Which country has the lowest expat population share?

Indonesia has the lowest expat population share

Indonesia is a nation of almost 300 million people, situated across its various islands, with just 0.2% of these being expatriates from other countries, approximately 600,000 people. This means that even if all the expats lived in the capital city, Jakarta, they would only make up around 5% of the city’s population.

Which country is the hardest to integrate into?

The ease of integration score is based on numerous cultural and social factors, with a higher score out of 100 indicating an easier country to integrate into, on average.

Saudi Arabia scored just 10/100, meaning that it is a tricky country to incorporate into. Cultural differences between the UK and Saudi Arabia include the ban on alcohol in the Muslim nation, as well as stricter rules regarding the rights of women.

Which country is the least proficient in speaking English?

If you do not speak the local language, then the country where expats will struggle the most is Thailand, the East Asian nation scored just 415/1,000, more than 200 points below the global average of 618/1,000.

Many people who have been on holiday in Thailand will find this harder to believe, as the English-speaking population in tourist-heavy regions of the nation is significantly higher than the national average. Therefore, learning Thai before moving would be very helpful for expats.

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Wherever you move, go with total peace of mind

At William Russell, we have over 30 years’ experience in providing tailored international health insurance, international income protection and international life insurance.

Making the move to another country can be challenging. But no matter where you go, you can take one thing off your mind. William Russell offers global health insurance that covers you for everything from minor injuries to long hospital stays, and we can even offer medical evacuations to patients who require emergency life or limb-saving treatment that isn’t available locally.

Terms & conditions apply to our insurance products and services. You can find full details of what our plans cover (and what they don’t cover) in our plan agreements.

Looking for international insurance before moving overseas?

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Methodology

To reveal where in the world it is trickiest and easiest to move to, we created this study with the following data and sources.

We created a list of popular relocation countries and ranked them on the following factors. Each country was given a normalised score from 0 to 10 for each factor under the following three pillars. An average was then calculated for each pillar, followed by an overall average.

Visa factors

Average visa processing time (work/long-stay): sourced from immigration websites and other sources. Please note that these estimates are often provided as a range only. In these cases, the midpoint was taken.
Visa cost (application fees): sourced using a combination of immigration sites and other sources.

Affordability factors

Cost of one-way flight from London to the capital city: www.google.com/travel/flights. (For all destinations, we used prices for March 10th 2025, taking the cheapest direct flight if available, or one-stop if not.)
Cost of living index: www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.jsp
Average annual salary: www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/average-annual-wages.html
Unemployment rate: data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS
Job listings per 100k residents: www.linkedin.com

Expat community & integration factors

Expat population share (% of total population born abroad): www.un.org/development/desa/pd/content/international-migrant-stock
Ease of integration: www.mipex.eu/play/
English proficiency: www.ef.co.uk/epi/ (Anglophone countries were score as 1,000)

Additional sources

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