Why You Might Not Want to Move Somewhere

Santiago de Chile. Maybe not so bad?
By ChaTo (Carlos Castillo)

In my informal reader poll, back when I had half the readership I do now, I asked readers where they wanted to move to and aside from the "anywhere" respondents (23%), only two people said they wanted to move to the Americas. One person responded with USA and another responded with Mexico. Nobody voted for an African country. In fact, less than 10% of respondents listed a non-European country.
I can't prove why people overwhelmingly choose Europe, but it's not simply that they want a high standard of living. There are plenty of non-European countries on the planet where you can enjoy a very high standard of living but some aspiring expats seem to not know this. In speaking face-to-face or via email with some would-be expats, I've often found that they change their mind about alternative destinations once they learn a bit about them. It's like sports: I've found that some people who claim they don't like sports actually enjoy them once they learn a bit about the rules and the players.
However, it's still worth doing your homework. In a recent Business Week article entitled China: For Many Expats, It's Not Worth It, there are many links to blogs from expats in China explaining why they're unhappy with the country. Much of it is attributed to institutional racism: you will never be Chinese (I don't know if this is true or not, but it's a comment I've heard often), but some of it is the pollution, corruption, or the food poisoning scandals.
If you're planning on heading abroad, make sure that you're not a starry-eyed dreamer. No, scratch that. A starry-eyed dreamer is fine, but make sure you know what you're really getting into. When I lived in Amsterdam and had a Dutch gentlemen angrily challenge me, demanding to know what I was doing to integrate into Dutch society, I was taken aback but I wasn't surprised. That's not something that would happen to an American in the UK, but certainly can happen in other countries (to be fair, most Dutch people are far too polite to be as blunt as this Dutch person was).
If you want to move abroad, you'll often find that non-European destinations have a lot to offer, but make sure you do your homework. It's a big planet and there's more stuff to see than you would imagine.