For foreign professionals, Germany is a good place to work. But they do not feel particularly welcome here. These are the key findings of the hitherto unpublished study "Expat Insider 2019" by InterNations. The interviewed expats take the Germans as subcooled and not child-friendly.
For the study, the expatriate social network surveyed more than 20,000 people from 180 nations about their views on living and working in 64 host countries around the world. The answers were bundled into six categories:
- life quality
- home life
- finances
- costs
- work life
- acclimation
The most satisfied are the coveted expats in Taiwan, Vietnam, Portugal, Mexico and Spain. At the very back: Nigeria, Italy and Kuwait. Germany is in the middle of popularity: rank 33 among 64 countries . The results in the individual categories are extremely different:
In working life, the Federal Republic occupies fourth place , with acclimation, however place 59 . In digitization , a subcategory of quality of life, Germany is a developing country from the point of view of foreign professionals: rank 55 .
"Expats in Germany value workplace conditions, job security and comparatively low working hours," says Kathrin Chudoba, head of the study, "But when it comes to settling in, people do not feel so much at home with us." This has already been shown in previous studies.
InterNations has been ranking since 2014. At that time, Germany was still 12th; In 2018, it was only on the 36th place.
The most important results in detail:
Economic situation: This makes the local expats the most satisfied. 90 percent see it as positive, 72 percent consider their workplace safe. Only Luxembourg receives even higher values.
Education and health system: Both are highly valued, especially the free public schools or relatively affordable private schools.
German and friendliness: moderate to miserable grades gets the Federal Republic on questions, which are about friendliness of the locals and the contact with them. Thus, only 52 percent of the expats in Germany describe the local population as generally friendly - on a global average, this figure is 68 percent.
And only 12 percent (27 percent globally) believe that Germans are very friendly towards foreign roommates. The attitude of the locals towards children is rated bad. "The Germans are not really open to foreigners," said one respondent from Mexico. "They say they want to integrate them, but most of the time they do not."
"Find friends": In this subcategory the Federal Republic ranks sixth on the last place. 55 percent say it's hard to make friends with Germans. "If you are no longer under 30 and have no German partner, it is usually difficult to find friends in Germany," said a US-American, who works in Germany. "The people here already have their own circle of friends and often do not accept others." The German language is perceived as a particular obstacle according to the survey.
Digital Infrastructure: A miserable testimony expats expats the German telecommunications providers. Germany ranks in the flop ten for access to the Internet and mobile communications. And when it comes to digital payments, the Federal Republic even lands on the penultimate place. It is worse from the perspective of expats only in Ecuador.
A respondent from Namibia said: "Unfortunately, when it comes to access to digital infrastructure (especially Internet and online banking), Germany is still in the Stone Age."
