Living in the Maldives

The Maldives is built around its resorts, and that makes it unusually open to newcomers, with hiring about as open as it gets and English the common tongue across the trade. Pay and prices both land in the middle, and with tax taking almost nothing, a careful month leaves a modest amount over. The work clusters in hospitality, construction, and the skilled trades that keep the islands running. It's an accessible place to land, more about the life than the savings.

Migration into the Maldives is built on one corridor above all: of the country's 70.2K foreign-born residents, more than half — 43.3K — come from Bangladesh, with India a distant second. That immigrant population has grown 17% over the past decade and now makes up 13% of everyone in the country, while the Maldivian diaspora abroad is tiny by comparison at just 2.8K.