Here are the best and worst cities for expatriates

EXPAT LIVING

Spain's third-largest city Valencia has been named the best destination for expatriates to live in, in a new ranking by InterNations that has placed one East African city in the bottom five.

The Expat City Ranking 2020, done after an extensive survey, has ranked three other Spanish cities in the top ten  - Alicante (2nd), Málaga (6th) and the capital Madrid (9th).

Out of the 66 cities in the ranking conducted by the world's largest expat community, Portugal's capital Lisbon is placed third ahead of the Panamanian capital Panama City (4th), Singapore (5th) and Argentina's capital Buenos Aires (7th).

Ranking 8th, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) has made it in the top ten for a fourth successive year while Abu Dhabi, taking the 10th spot, is the best-rated Middle Eastern destination this year, according to the ranking.

So what about the worst cities to live in for expats?

Salmiya (Kuwait) is the worst-rated destination, anchoring the list in the unwanted 66th spot.

The Italian capital Rome takes the second-last spot (65th) in the Expat City Ranking 2020.

Ranking 64th, South Korea's capital Seoul features in the bottom three league while another Italian city, Milan, comes in 63rd place.

East Africa has representation in this ranking - albeit on the bottom end of the list. Kenya's capital Nairobi is ranked 62nd, placing among the bottom five destinations.

The French capital Paris (61st), South Africa's largest city Johannesburg (60th), Santiago de Chile (59th), Republic of Ireland's capital Dublin (58th) and Hong Kong (57th) feature in the bottom 10.

The Expat City Ranking is based  on the annual Expat Insider survey by InterNations, considered the largest global community with some four million members in 420 cities around the globe. And with such a diverse membership, InterNations is seen as a valuable source of information for people who live and work abroad.

For the latest ranking, a survey of over 15,000 expatriates respresenting 173 nationalities and living in 181 countries or territories provided information on various aspects of expat life.

Here is how it worked:

Participants were asked to rate more than 25 different aspects of urban life abroad on a scale of one to seven. The rating process emphasized the respondents' personal satisfaction with these aspects, considering both emotional topics and more factual aspects with equal weight.

The participants' ratings  of  the  individual  factors  were  then  bundled  in  various  combinations  for  a  total  of  13 subcategories,  and  their  mean  values  were  used  to  draw  up  four  topical  indices,namely: quality  of  urban living, getting settled, urban work life, and finance & housing.

These were further averaged in order to rank 66 cities worldwide.

The survey also includes a  local  cost of  living  index,  which  does,  however,  not  factor  into  the  overall  ranking  to  avoid overrepresenting financial aspects.

For a city to be featured in the Expat City Ranking 2020, a sample size of at least 50 survey participants per city was required.