Dubai has ranked third worldwide in the InterNations Expat City Ranking 2021. It is hailed for being easy to navigate without speaking the local language, for its friendly local population, and for how easy it is to feel at home here – not that we’re surprised.
The Expat City Ranking is based on the annual Expat Insider survey by InterNations, which is one of the most extensive surveys about living and working abroad. This year, 57 cities around the globe were analysed.
Dubai ranks third in the world for expats, beating major cities such as Sydney, Prague and Madrid. It falls just behind Kuala Lumpur, which came first, and Málaga, which came second.
Abu Dhabi came 16th, and had an overall happiness rating of 70 percent. In comparison, Dubai scored 72 percent.
The survey offers in-depth information about five areas of expat life: quality of urban living, getting settled, urban work-life balance, finance and house, and local cost of living. The first four topics make up the Expat City Ranking, which reveals the best and worst cities for expats to live in.
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Dubai is deemed easy for settling in, but hard to afford. It receives the best results in the getting settled index, and it is the easiest city in the world to live in without speaking the local language (94 percent versus 54 percent globally).
Additionally, 81 percent describe the local population as generally friendly towards foreign residents, versus 67 percent globally. And 75 percent of expats feel at home in Dubai versus 65 percent globally and find it easy to make new friends.
Dubai also does very well in the quality of urban living index, expats are happy with the political stability and 97 percent feel safe here.
Abu Dhabi scored highly for expats getting settled and for its quality of urban life. (And that is before the massive Abu Dhabi Loop bicycle track opens.
The UAE recently ranked first for women’s community safety in a survey by Georgetown University. Read more about it here.
We’re proud of our city, as always.
www.internations.org
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