Living in Bosnia

What sets Bosnia apart is the tax bite, since pay and the cost of living land in much the same place as its neighbors' but a firmer share is taken before the money reaches you. Even after that, what survives covers an ordinary life with something left over. Work is the harder side. Without local contacts or a record in the country, a newcomer finds hiring slow, and English opens only a few corners of the economy.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is shaped above all by the people who have left. About 1.6M Bosnians live abroad — half again the foreign-born population at home, and a number that has grown 9% over the decade. The diaspora spreads across the region and into Germany: 363K live in Croatia, with another 320,400 in Germany and a large Serbian community besides. Inside the country, immigrants number only about 33,000.