So another thread ( https://lemmy.world/post/17746018 ) got me wondering… How many people would want to move to another country?
Just to provide a concrete scenario, let’s assume that in your current country you (magically) have a decent-ish job. They open up offices in another country of your choosing, and you have the option of moving there and work for an equivalent living wage.
They’re able to get visas set up (however improbable that may be) for you and any family, but you have to go through the process of finding housing, physically moving your belongings and anything else you need to set up.
What countries would you take the offer to move to, if any?
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I’m an American, so yes - in a heartbeat.
Broadly, I wouldnt much care where it was, just so long as it was somewhere that was not being actively transfomed into a plutocratic/christofascist autocracy.
And in fact, there’s virtually nothing that I want more at this point in time than to get the hell out while I can. I fully expect that if I don’t, I’m going to end up in prison or dead, just like so many other vocal dissidents under so many other authoritarian regimes.
^the new American Dream
More and more I want to now. I’m growing to really have a high level of disdain for this country and it’s lack of doing anything for the worse off.
Steady on, I only just got to Australia!
But it’s New Zealand.
Only if the living wage is far better or the job market in that country is better, so I can find another job if things don’t work out as expected.
Moving the country means I have to sacrifice some benefits that I already have like my family, dog, and house. Would have said yes in a heartbeat years ago, but not now.
100% if I could afford it.
I mean, I did. Highly recommend. Spoiler alert almost all the non-USA people places a multinational company would offer to post you don’t have guns
Off the cuff, yes…
Canada(West Coast)
Australia
Iceland
One of the Scandinavian countries. (Norway, Finland, Sweden)
US Here, I’d like to but not having the skill sets right now makes for difficult to move to another country.
Which leads to another problem, if I do I leave my entire social network behind to a culture that I don’t know and trying to live there. While I’m not against that, I realize that can be VERY isolating so not sure where the place I’d want to go right now.
I do have that option and choose not to exercise it because it would take me too far away from my kids.
I’ve already done it once. I have a list of countries that I’m considering just in case I have to do it again
I really love Belgium. It’s a criminally underrated country with a silly culture and a pretty fun vibe.
The bad news is that I’m Moroccan, and not just any Moroccan, a QUEER Moroccan (even more specifically, an aroace gender non-conforming Moroccan man), meaning basically everyone hates me.
I need to get the visa which takes forever to get and I have a chance of getting denied.
Right wing politicians in the country are basically super racist and really hate the immigrants so much (most of the bad apples are second generation folks that literally act like they’re having a stroke, even Moroccans hate them).
Housing is expensive basically everywhere. People in Belgium are pretty introverted (just like me), meaning they basically don’t care of my presence, but it’s much harder to make friends.
Everyone I know actively discourages moving there because they only know Brussels and… the snooze festival that is Charleroi or something, but they’ve never heard of Ghent or Hasselt or Bruges or Liège or Antwerpen (truly amazing cities) so they’re basically untrustworthy.
I’m so disconnected from the country I live in that I genuinely don’t feel Moroccan and want to get rid of my citizenship (spoiler alert: it’s quite literally impossible). But is it really easy to convince people? Actually, my family gets very mad when I say this because they’re super patriotic and shit.
I don’t even practice religion. I’ve never cared about it. I do believe in God, but I really lack that spirituality and whatnot that would make me “religious”. But unfortunately everyone would wanna kill me for apostasy.
I could go on, but we’d be here all day. Basically, I hate my country so much and I just want out so bad.
SE Asian here. Currently doing my best to move myself and my family outta here to the west. Lemme know if any of you here got an IT job opening.
North Americans, I’m one of you. You have to leave for a while. You gain perspective.
Back in '07, I left. I was in Australia in '09 and some Aussies asked me, ‘what’s it like living over there?’
The only thing I could come up with at the time was " causes neuroticism.’ It’s so much worse now that we have social media, smartphones, and a penchant for duelling forms of misinformation.
What I learned is that there are many ways to live. There are lots of goals people have — and can have — many of them are quite modest: a safe place to live, love, and feel part of community. There are much worse daily experiences than those we hear about in the news, or see on TV, or read about it books. There is truly grinding poverty and privation that does not translate well into a novel or an article — readership is fickle. Yet, from those ashes, there is still joy, levity, and grace.
So, we residents of the most powerful economies must see outside of our bubbles. We must see, first hand, how we are duped into believing there is only one set of goals, one North American dream, one prestige, and one centre of power. When you spend enough years away, you just might forget about homeownership, career-building, and fretting over retirement. You might find that life is about living, about doing good work, and about being with people you care to pass the time with.
At least, that’s what 12 years outside of NA taught me.
Not really. I live in Switzerland, thing is, there are no countries that surpass it in terms of safety, income, social security and political stability combined. For me at least it is the perfect country to live in.
no countries that surpass it
Humblebrag, eh?
I had the chance to join Google (Zurich?) 2014, but it got kiboshed when we weren’t sure we both could get along with just English, and her with no ability to work. So we asked for Ireland, but they don’t work like that. And we were out.
Basically everyone speaks some English, wouldn’t have been an issue. And I am not saying everything is perfect, just that there is no better alternative.
I (originally from the US) moved to Germany with a Swiss girlfriend, so we visit Switzerland frequently and know the cultural/politics.
I find Germany to have much better social policies than Switzerland, such as better worker rights/conditions, public health insurance. The Swiss people voted against having minimum 5 weeks vacation and also just rejected caps on the private insurance minimum costs. The politics are much more conservative/individualistic compared to Germany. On a positive side, Switzerland probably has the best public transport system in Europe.
Not sure about social policies, for example homelessness exists here only by choice. Every citizen will get a roof over their head if necessary.
Medical insurance could be better but on the other hand we have one of the worlds best healthcare systems (for which I pay 200 bucks a month with a deductible of 2500.-).
And if the politics are conservative, which can’t really be as the conservatives have below 50% of the votes and results are usually determined by what the center party wants, that is what the people want (we all vote every 3 months on various issues) and I will respect that.
And even then, Germany may soon be controlled by CDU/Afd and I seriously doubt anyone would want to live in that kind of Germany.
we have one of the worlds best healthcare systems (for which I pay 200 bucks a month with a deductible of 2500.-).
Canada: 25th in the ranks, apparently, but 0 and 0. While I didn’t mind paying the premiums - and it slid with my income - the idea of a deductible/copay/user-fee I find abhorrent, chilling and the wrong way down a slippery slope.
I did not say it is free, but the price to performance ratio is quite good. Cost however is increasing slowly but steadily which is a bit scary.
I live in Finland. Wouldn’t mind a less wintery climate but not to the point of willing to move elsewhere.
Wanna swap? I’ll come enjoy the snow, you can come to the UK and enjoy the, uh, rain.
It’s not the winter wonderland many foreigners think it is, unless you go to Lapland. Most of the winter is just wet, cold, dark, slippery, and absolutely miserable. It’s dark when you leave for work and it’s dark when you get back home.
Ngl sounds good to me. I like it cold and dark. Did I mention I’m a mole?
Yeah sounds awesome to me too tbh. My mood brightens whenever I see snow and I don’t find that low sunlight levels affect me at all.
However apparently between 1-10% of people are affected by seaonal affective disorder so those people may want to avoid Finland during the winter months
My wife’s sister found she has SAD when she moved to sweden. One of her kids has it too. They cope with the lights and the , well, the understanding they’re gonna be affected. They seem to suggest that it’s not rare there, and that its frequency makes it more acceptable and understandable. It’s okay to be super-down for a few days on a bad wave, and people seem to get it.
