Some countries impress visitors quickly and still leave expats feeling oddly outside the room. That gap matters. A place can be safe, efficient, scenic, and easy to admire while still proving socially difficult for people trying to build an actual life there. The emotional side of relocation is harder to quantify than rent, healthcare, or transit, but it is often what decides whether a move feels sustainable or lonely.
That is what makes InterNations’ Expat Insider 2025 survey useful. Drawing on responses from more than 10,000 expats across 46 destinations, its Ease of Settling In Index looks specifically at three things: Finding Friends, Culture & Welcome, and Local Friendliness. In other words, this is not a ranking of which countries feel awkward on a weekend trip. It is a ranking of where foreign residents said it felt hardest to feel welcome, comfortable, and genuinely at home.
1. Kuwait
Kuwait finishes 46th out of 46 in Ease of Settling In, putting it dead last in the 2025 survey. Its subcategory scores are just as severe: 46th for Culture & Welcome, 46th for Local Friendliness, and 40th for Finding Friends. That is about as blunt as this kind of dataset gets. Expats were not just saying social life felt slow. They were saying the broader atmosphere itself felt less welcoming than anywhere else in the ranking.
The result also looks deeply established rather than temporary. InterNations says Kuwait has ranked last in this index every year since the survey began in 2014, except once in 2017. At that point, the pattern stops looking like a one-off wobble and starts looking like a consistent expat complaint. If a country keeps landing at the bottom for friendliness, welcome, and social ease, the message is pretty hard to misread.
2. Norway
Norway ranks 45th for Ease of Settling In, making it the second-worst country in the 2025 results. Its subcategory scores are 45th for Culture & Welcome, 43rd for Local Friendliness, and 44th for Finding Friends. That spread matters because it shows a broad social problem rather than one specific weak spot dragging down the score. The emotional side of settling in appears difficult across the board.
InterNations says Norway has now landed in the bottom 10 for six straight years, and the report points to cultural adjustment as a particular struggle for expats there. That makes Norway one of the clearest examples of a place that can be gorgeous, orderly, and high-functioning while still feeling hard to enter socially. A country can work beautifully on paper and still feel distant in practice.
3. Finland
Finland comes in 44th for Ease of Settling In. Its subcategory pattern is 44th for Culture & Welcome, 41st for Local Friendliness, and 45th for Finding Friends. Friendship-building is the sharpest weak point, but the broader sense of welcome also scores badly. So this is not just about people needing patience. It is about many expats feeling that real belonging remains hard to reach.
InterNations says Finland dropped into the bottom 10 in 2024 and has stayed there. The report also notes that many expats feel lonely and struggle to build a satisfying social life. That makes Finland another country where strong institutions and a good global reputation do not automatically translate into an easy emotional landing for newcomers.
4. Germany
Germany ranks 43rd for Ease of Settling In in the 2025 survey. Its subcategory scores are 43rd for Culture & Welcome, 42nd for Local Friendliness, and 42nd for Finding Friends. That is a consistently weak social profile rather than one isolated issue. Expats were not mainly pointing to one particular obstacle. They were describing a generally tough social landing.
This is one of the clearest examples of a country that can make sense on paper while still feeling emotionally difficult for outsiders. Germany can offer structure, opportunity, and stability, but those strengths do not automatically create warmth. The survey suggests many expats feel that difference clearly: life may function well, yet deeper social ease still proves harder to find than they expected.
5. Sweden
Sweden places 42nd for Ease of Settling In. Its subcategory results are 41st for Culture & Welcome, 40th for Local Friendliness, and 46th, dead last, for Finding Friends. That last number is what defines Sweden’s profile in this survey. Expats may not see it as the least welcoming country overall, but they do see it as the hardest place in the ranking for actually forming friendships.
That is a poor social result for a country that often performs much better in conversations about safety, public services, and overall quality of life. The tension is familiar by now: daily systems may be calm and reliable, while the human side of settling in still feels colder and harder to crack. Sweden looks like one of the clearest examples of that mismatch.
6. Austria
Austria comes in 41st for Ease of Settling In. Its detailed scores are 36th for Culture & Welcome, 44th for Local Friendliness, and 36th for Finding Friends. That makes Austria a little different from some of the countries around it. The biggest drag is not a total collapse in every social measure. It is the weaker score for how friendly locals are perceived to be.
That distinction matters because it points to a quieter kind of expat frustration. A place can be elegant, organized, and very livable while still leaving newcomers with the feeling that everyday interactions remain cooler than expected. Austria does not sit at the very bottom overall, but it still lands clearly on the hard-to-settle-in side of the index.
7. Denmark
Denmark ranks 40th for Ease of Settling In. Its subcategory pattern is 40th for Culture & Welcome, 35th for Local Friendliness, and 43rd for Finding Friends. So Denmark’s weakest area is not really the broad friendliness question. It is the practical difficulty of turning life there into real friendship and social belonging.
InterNations even points out that Denmark is the only Nordic country in this bottom group whose Local Friendliness score avoids the bottom 10. That sounds like a partial save, but only a partial one. The overall result still suggests that many expats find Denmark socially harder to enter than its polished, high-functioning global image might lead them to expect.
8. Switzerland
Switzerland places 39th for Ease of Settling In. Its subcategory scores are 39th for Culture & Welcome, 36th for Local Friendliness, and 41st for Finding Friends. The pattern is fairly even, which is revealing in its own way. There is no single social weakness doing all the damage here. The experience simply appears underwhelming across the full emotional side of settling in.
That result fits a wider expat pattern seen in several highly functional countries. Switzerland can look extremely attractive in practical terms while still feeling reserved, socially slow, and harder to break into on a personal level. Comfort and distance can coexist, and the ranking suggests many expats feel both at once.
9. South Korea
South Korea rounds out the bottom nine at 38th for Ease of Settling In. Its subcategory results are 42nd for Culture & Welcome, 39th for Local Friendliness, and 38th for Finding Friends. So while it is not at the very bottom overall, it still performs weakly across all three components that make up the index.
InterNations also says South Korea is the only new addition to the bottom 10 in 2025, which makes it one of the more notable shifts in this year’s ranking. The result suggests not an obviously hostile environment, but a place where expats still report a fairly difficult social and emotional landing compared with most other destinations in the survey.
The larger lesson is that feeling unwelcome is often less dramatic than people imagine. Survey data like this usually points not to open hostility, but to colder social cues, slower friendship-building, and weaker feelings of belonging. InterNations’ 2025 results are really a map of where expats say the emotional part of relocation feels hardest, and on that measure, these nine countries came out worst.
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