Taking a Job Abroad as an LGBTQ+ Professional: What to Check Before You Move

A relocation package tells you about salary, flights and the first three months of rent. It tells you nothing about whether your marriage is recognised when you land, whether your employer's health cover follows you, or what happens if the law changes after you have signed.

For LGBTQ+ professionals, an international move has a second set of questions running underneath the obvious ones. Here is how to work through them in the right order.

Separate the employer from the country

These are two different things, and conflating them is the most common mistake.

Your employer's policy governs your working life: benefits, leave, network, reporting routes, whether HR has written guidance. National law governs everything else: recognition of your relationship, your ability to sponsor a partner's visa, healthcare access outside the company scheme, legal gender recognition.

A strong employer in a difficult jurisdiction is a real option — but only if you know which protections come from which source. Ask your prospective employer, explicitly, which of its policies apply in the destination country and which are head-office only. "That's our US policy" is a complete answer to a question you needed to ask.

The partner question comes first

If you are moving with someone, this is the question that determines everything else. Can your employer sponsor a dependent visa for an unmarried partner? For a same-sex spouse? Does the destination recognise a marriage or civil partnership conducted elsewhere?

The answers move. Poland began recognising foreign same-sex marriages in civil records this year — a shift that changes the calculation for anyone considering Warsaw, where Warner Bros. Discovery runs a substantial media and technology hub. Check the position at the point you apply, not the position you remember.

Healthcare, and what travels with you

Employer health cover is often country-specific even inside a global scheme. If you are on hormone therapy, receiving fertility treatment, or need ongoing care of any kind, ask whether the destination plan covers it and whether there is a gap during the transfer.

This is also where the difference between a written policy and a general commitment matters most. Ask for the document.

Where employers are actually hiring

Some of the most interesting LGBTQ+-friendly opportunities are not in the cities people assume. Among myGwork partners currently recruiting internationally:

• Metro Manila — JLL is hiring facilities and client-service teams across Taguig, in a market where national anti-discrimination protections remain incomplete and employer policy therefore carries unusual weight
• Monterrey and Mexico City — RS Group holds HRC Equidad MX certification, a Mexico-specific assessment rather than a head-office claim
• Basel and Hyderabad — Novartis recruits across both, two very different legal environments under one employer
• Stabio, Switzerland — VF Corporation runs its European campus with over 1,000 people from around 40 nationalities
• Tallinn, Budapest, Singapore and Austin — Wise has almost half its workforce living in a country that is not their nationality, which makes moving normal rather than exceptional

Questions worth asking before you accept

Ask whether the employee network has a chapter where you are going, or whether it is a mailing list from another continent. Ask who the regional inclusion sponsor is and whether you can speak to them. Ask what support exists if the legal situation deteriorates — a serious employer will have thought about it. And ask to talk to someone LGBTQ+ who already made the same move; the answer to that request is itself informative.

Start from the employer

If you are weighing several countries, it is usually easier to start from employers with a credible record in more than one and work backwards. Our guide to LGBTQ+ inclusive employers by industry and country groups 42 partners by both, so you can see who is hiring where before you narrow down.

myGwork is the Inclusive Talent Platform, connecting LGBTQ+ professionals and graduates with employers who have done the work.