Kazakhstan greatly improves in Expat Insider 2017 survey
This year more than 12,500 respondents residing in 188 countries took part in the survey. As a result, Kazakhstan climbed 20 spots up and landed in the middle of the ranking at ?35 between Australia (34th) and Panama (36th).
InterNations note that ‘the overall country ranking for 2017 is full of surprises'. For instance, Bahrain ranked 19th in 2016 earned the top spot this year for ease of settling in and career opportunities. It is followed by Costa Rica. Mexico rounds out the top 3 of the ranking.
Last year's three top-performing countries - Taiwan, Malta and Ecuador fell to 4th, 7th and 25th spots, respectively. Nigeria, Kuwait and Greece landed at the bottom of the overall ranking.
InterNations note that this year Kazakhstan leapfrogged from 57th spot in 2016 to 25th in 2017 in the Working Abroad Index. Based on the results of the ranking, our country also made significant gains in such categories as career prospects and job security.
According to respondents, Kazakhstan also managed to progress across such subcategories as finding friends (from 44th to 28th place) and feeling welcome (from 51st to 38th place). "In 2016 49% of expats described making local friends in Kazakhstan as generally easy, but this rose to 60% in 2017," InterNations said in its report.
Participants of the Expat Insider 2017 survey were asked to rate over 40 different factors related to various aspects of life abroad, i.e. making friends abroad, personal safety, career prospects, etc.