Dr Nicola Cann, Sleep Psychologist and regular contributor

Relocating can be exciting, liberating, and character-building. It can also be oddly exposing. You may arrive full of plans and optimism, only to discover that the hardest part is not the rent, the transport system, or learning where to buy decent groceries. It is the quieter challenge of becoming known again. You can no longer just pop over to see your family. And tricky time differences might mean you can’t call your best friend when you’ve had a bad day.

Building and maintaining relationships is one of the most consistent predictors of good mental health, resilience, and life satisfaction. Friendships are not simply a social bonus; they are one of the foundations of how well we cope, adapt, and thrive. This becomes especially relevant when we move. A systematic review by Doki et al. (2018) found that cultural differences and changes to daily routines are major sources of stress when relocating overseas, and that relationships are an important predictor of how well people adjust.

Why making friends can feel so hard

I moved often as a child and don’t remember having any trouble making friends. Children are placed into ready-made social worlds. Adults usually need to be far more intentional.

As an adult, making friends in a new place is difficult for predictable reasons. Research has found common barriers include language issues, worries about discrimination, and the fact that many locals already have established friendship groups. 

Even without these factors, as a newcomer you are often navigating an exhausting period of adjustment. You are learning systems, routines, norms, geography, humour, etiquette, and perhaps a new language. That takes emotional and cognitive energy, so creating a new social life on top of all of that can feel like a bridge too far.

Research also tells us that we tend to expect interactions with strangers to go badly (Brown, 2009). We anticipate finding no common ground, or worse, that strangers won’t be receptive. This common cognitive bias makes it easy to shy away from talking to strangers, but in reality those strangers will probably be friendlier than you expect.

Why we gravitate towards people like us 

When we make friends we are naturally drawn to people we already have something in common with (see Travel Psychologist article How To Thrive When you Move Abroad). It’s easier to connect with people we share a language and culture with. Being able to fluently communicate with someone can feel like a welcome respite when you’re continuously navigating a foreign language and a new culture. There is relief in jokes landing properly, in food that tastes comforting, and in references that need no explanation. 

Same-culture friendships can reduce loneliness, stress, and homesickness. They can help you steady yourself in the early phase of a move, and some of these people will probably become long term friends. 

But this comfort has limits. Close contact with others who share your culture may initially reduce stress and help with adjustment, but if these are the only kinds of friendships you cultivate you will miss out on opportunities to integrate into your new culture. People who move overseas and stick to friendships within their own cultural groups are slower to learn the new language, have less contact with people from the host culture, and are less confident in their new environment. 

The importance of local friends

Research suggests that people who make friends with locals when moving overseas experience less stress, greater satisfaction with their move, and greater psychological adjustment to their new environment. 

In practical terms this is because local friends can help to decode the subtle social norms of your new daily life. They are your cultural translators. They know which invitations are genuine, which neighbourhoods are worth exploring, and where the best restaurants are that never appear on lists.

You don’t have to totally reinvent yourself to fit in. Psychology tells us that the best strategy for fully integrating into your new culture is actually to have a mixture of same-culture and local friends. This is called “acculturation”, where you adopt the new culture while maintaining aspects of your own culture. 

Friendships, identity and belonging

There is good evidence to suggest that living abroad is associated with developing a clearer sense of self. That may be because relocation often disrupts familiar roles, routines, and identities, forcing us to ask who we are when the usual markers fall away. Relationships are a key factor in how we define ourselves, so the friends we make when we move overseas can shape more than just our weekend plans.

Research also suggests that intentions matter when it comes to moving overseas. People who intend to stay longer in their new country tend to have more close friendships there. Friendship is an investment on both sides, and people are often more willing to build closeness when a relationship feels likely to last. Also, if you keep telling yourself you are “only here temporarily,” you may unconsciously hold back. Sometimes belonging begins when you allow the possibility that this chapter of life is more than just an adventure and is worth investing in.

Not all friendships need to be the same

It can be easy to set unrealistic standards for new friendships when we move overseas – basing our expectations on our existing friendships. But this approach is flawed and can create unhelpful barriers.  

Friendship means different things in different places

One reason moving can feel socially confusing is that “friendship” is not a universal concept; it doesn’t look the same everywhere. The qualities of social relationships vary across countries, and the ways people develop and maintain friendships can depend on different cultural norms around intimacy: reciprocity, trust, loyalty and self-disclosure.

In one city, warmth may be immediate but depth takes time. In another, people may seem reserved initially but become deeply reliable once trust is established. Some cultures prize frequent contact. Others see friendship as low-maintenance but enduring. Some social scenes revolve around groups; others around one-to-one connection. When I moved to New Zealand, a place known for its friendly people, I found it surprisingly hard to make friends, or at least to work out who my friends were. I couldn’t easily differentiate between people who were just being nice, and those who were becoming closer connections.

So if a city feels cold, flaky, or hard to read, don’t take it personally. Instead be curious. You may be encountering different social rules rather than rejection. Your new support network might look very different to your home support network, and that’s ok.

Strong ties and weak ties 

When people think of friendship, they often imagine the idealised close friend: deep talks, emotional safety, someone you can always call after a rough day. Those relationships matter, but so do weaker ties.

Weak ties might include the neighbour you chat to on the driveway, the receptionist at the gym who knows your name, the person you always say ‘hi’ to when you’re walking in the park. Research suggests both strongly and weakly tied friendships are important for social interaction and wellbeing when moving overseas, so don’t underestimate those peripheral relationships.

Structure beats hope

Friendships typically arise through the social systems we are part of: neighbourhoods, sports clubs, workplaces, study, community groups, and other shared environments we repeatedly visit. My advice is to make good use of all of your networks, and maybe find some new ones too.

Professional networks can be a great way to connect with people you already have something in common with, but if you don’t look beyond those networks then all of your friendships are going to be work-based, and that can lead to a limited social circle, and potentially limited integration into your new community.

Research with migrants has found that volunteering increased opportunities for everyday interaction and fostered stronger attachment to community spaces. In other words, volunteering doesn’t just help you meet people, it can also help you feel like you belong.

Find your people by looking for communities within your new city who have shared interests. Dance has always been a way for me to connect and I have made lifelong friends everywhere I have lived through joining local dance classes. But don’t limit yourself to your existing interests. All sorts of new activities and hobbies might be available in your new city. Be bold, try something new, meet people you wouldn’t usually cross paths with.

Quality over quantity

When you’re alone in a new city it can be hard to resist invitations from friendly strangers who you don’t actually have much in common with. I urge you to be more discerning. You don’t need to make friends with everyone. Finding the right people is more important than finding many people, and creating a social network in a new city can be a great opportunity to reevaluate what kind of friendships you want.

A note on safety

Moving to a new city can be exciting but it can also disorient us and disrupt our ability to recognise unhealthy relationship dynamics. This can be amplified by moving to a new country where life is very different. This can get in the way of our ability to sense if something is ‘off’ in a relationship or if someone is treating us in a way that isn’t ok. This vulnerability is amplified if you are younger and living away from your hometown for the first time.

It is also worth knowing that unhealthy friendships often start out great: You feel like you’ve clicked with someone and you start to feel ‘hooked in’ and invested in the friendship. You may be familiar with the term love bombing which typically occurs in romantic relationships, but a similar process can happen in friendships. 

People may overlook the fact that the relationship feels intense because they don’t have many other friends in the city, and so this intensity feels like it is due to the situation and not a red flag. It certainly can be though. Over time, unhealthy dynamics often emerge gradually: boundary-pushing disguised as humour, backhanded compliments, subtle put-downs, possessiveness, talking badly about you in front of others, behaviour that leaves you confused and doubting yourself.

Being aware of this possibility and looking out for the pattern I’ve described and the red flags in friendships can help to keep you safe. Talking about how you feel to someone you trust back home is also important, especially if you are feeling confused by someone’s behaviour. A ‘friend’ who seeks to take advantage of you will always try to isolate you from healthier relationships, and so your existing connections (however far away) are key.

Final thoughts

I have multiple places I call home now, and that is largely because of the friends I made in each of these places.

The first weeks or months in a new city are usually confusing. Then things start to feel more manageable. Then, in time, they become full of private meaning. A café becomes your local, where they know how you take your coffee. A street becomes the place where you laughed until 2am with a friend. 

This happens gradually, through repeated small acts: persevering, staying curious, and letting unfamiliar people become familiar. And one day, without fanfare, you realise you are no longer a visitor.

References

Brown, L. (2009). An ethnographic study of the friendship patterns of international students in England: An attempt to recreate home through conational interaction. International Journal of Educational Research, 48(3), 184-193.

Décieux, J. P., & Mörchen, L. (2021). Emigration, friends, and social integration: The determinants and development of friendship network size after arrival. In The global lives of German migrants: Consequences of international migration across the life course (pp. 247-264). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Doki, S., Sasahara, S., & Matsuzaki, I. (2018). Stress of working abroad: a systematic review. International archives of occupational and environmental health, 91, 767-784.

Rienties, B., & Nolan, E. M. (2014). Understanding friendship and learning networks of international and host students using longitudinal Social Network Analysis. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 41, 165-180.

Rüdel, J., & Steinmann, J. P. (2024). ‘With a little help from my educated friends’: revisiting the role of social capital for immigrants’ labour market integration in Germany. Comparative Migration Studies, 12(1), 7.

Usta, D. D. (2025). Blurry Boundaries, Neutral Spaces: Migration and Forms of Friendship. Sociological Research Online, 13607804251359625.

Wilkinson, R., Shiba, K., Gibson, C. B., Okafor, C. N., Chen, Y., Padgett, R. N., … & VanderWeele, T. J. (2026). Strangers, Friends, and Everything Between: Sociodemographic Variation in Social Relationship Quality Across 22 Countries. Social Indicators Research, 181(1), 11.

Zhang, Y., & Meijering, L. (2025). Internal migrants’ social integration through community volunteering during the pandemic in China. Migration Studies, 13(1), mnae053.