The friendliest - and least friendly - countries in the world

published 11 September 2017

If you’re considering moving out of this godforsaken country amid all the doom and gloom of Brexit, advert breaks on The Great British Bake Off and the continued existence of Piers Morgan, you’re probably trying to figure out a plan.

You probably can’t just get on a plane with a suitcase and a pocket full of dreams, as fun as that sounds.

It generally helps to find out a bit about where you’re going to be moving first, and thankfully there’s now a pretty easy way.

InterNations’ ‘Expat Index’ has collected the wisdom of those who have relocated from their home country to get an idea of which nations are the most and least friendly, among other things.

de8cd1b4e00dad330ab49f011e455760-1556670364-4YRm-column-width-inline — The most and least friendly countries have been revealed in a new survey

Out of the 65 countries assessed, the United Kingdom ranked 52^nd for friendliness, 44^th for ease of settling in, 37^th for feeling welcome, 49^th for finding friends and 35^th when it comes to how easy and important it is to speak the local language.

Pretty rubbish all in all, then.

But you’re not here for that – you’re here to find out where’s best to move to if you’re leaving the UK.

If friendliness is high on your priorities, Portugal leads the way, while Costa Rica and Mexico are right up there if the most important thing is finding new friends.

At the other end of the scale, expats claim Kuwait is the worst place you can move to if you want to feel welcome or surround yourself with friendly people, while the language barrier is worst in Russia and it’s tough to settle in if you move to Denmark.

But the best country overall – with a top-10 ranking in all of the four categories – is Bahrain.

d0fa5564c746dd725ad3ecbeeef64a29-1556670364-yw9V-column-width-inline — Bahrain is a solid all-round option

According to InterNations, the criteria were as follows:

“Survey respondents had to rate several factors on a scale of one to seven, including the friendliness of the local population, how easy it is to make friends, how welcome they feel in their country of residence, and how easy and important it is to speak the local language.”

The rankings, carried out by at least 75 respondents per country, produced the following results: