Where Southeast Asians really want to live, work and travel

Mass media commonly portrays Southeast Asia as an exciting, adventure-fuelled and culturally rich region – if often an exoticised one – for inhabitants and visitors alike. The final section of the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute’s State of Southeast Asia 2026 Survey, based on respondents’ “relocation preference and travel choices”, adds to the already abundant evidence of the “soft power” of regional countries.soft power, a term coined by American political scientist Joseph Nye in 1990, is widely understood in international relations as a fundamental aspect of a country’s attractiveness, alongside its military and economic might, or “hard power”.Nye defined soft power as the “ability to obtain preferred outcomes by attraction rather than coercion or payment”. Varying definitions and measures of this concept now exist, as evident in global indices, with the main pillars being a country’s culture, political values and foreign policy. How attractive a country is as “a place to invest, trade, work, study or visit” is key. In Southeast Asia, these latter aspects of soft power are now woven into the region’s flourishing “creative economy”, even as certain inadequacies of national and regional infrastructure remain.