Digital nomadism: the perfect life?

Is the digit­al nomad life­style the per­fect, bound­ary-break­ing exist­ence it appears to be on social media? Or does the free­dom to live as a ‘cit­izen of the world’ mask a deep­er dislocation? 

Jim Butcher exam­ines the cul­tur­al and polit­ic­al trade-offs of hyper­mobil­ity, and ques­tions what is lost when we walk away from the con­cepts of com­munity, cit­izen­ship, and ‘home’.

It’s a “Good Tour­ism” Insight. (You too can write a “GT” Insight.)

Just a perfect day

“Just a per­fect day, you made me for­get myself”
_ Lou Reed

The nov­el Per­fec­tion by Vin­cenzo Lat­ronico fea­tures Anna and Tom, digit­al freel­an­cers work­ing remotely who have moved to Ber­lin in search of their per­fect life. No men­tion is made of ‘home’. Their life — food, art, and polit­ics — seems almost cur­ated, and is por­trayed to the world via social media, on one occa­sion to attract sub­let­ters. Oth­er expats come and go; footloose, like the protagonists.

Yet as Anna and Tom seek a cos­mo­pol­it­an per­fec­tion, their lives come across as empty.

The sense through­out is that they are dis­lo­cated from the place in which they find them­selves. The couple search for mean­ing through art, but remain ali­en­ated from the soci­ety that pro­duced it. The nov­el speaks to an ennui accom­pa­ny­ing the footloose search for life­style. That search — super­fi­cially excit­ing and bound­ary-break­ing — can take the indi­vidu­al away from a con­nec­tion with oth­er people asso­ci­ated with ‘home’.

The per­fect life simply does not feel authentic.

Per­fec­tion seems to par­al­lel much of what has been writ­ten about digit­al nomads. The globe offers them an array of cul­tur­al choices through which to live their best life. Tech­no­logy and remote work­ing, giv­en a push by the pan­dem­ic, enable this. Tra­di­tion­al bound­ar­ies between home and away, travel & tour­ism, and leis­ure and work are breached.

The free­dom to travel is to be cel­eb­rated, yet the cos­mo­pol­it­an­ism of the digit­al nomad betrays the crisis of mean­ing that Latronico’s nov­el describes. The free­dom to eschew roots and home, and view the world as a life­style oppor­tun­ity, is also a free­dom from things that mat­ter more.

Con­tents ^

Imagine no countries

“Ima­gine there’s no coun­tries”
_ John Len­non

Digit­al nomads are footloose work­ers who loc­ate in desir­able towns and cit­ies around the world to con­duct their busi­ness. They are gen­er­ally well-heeled, without fam­ily com­mit­ments, and pos­sess skills and occu­pa­tions that can be under­taken from any­where with a good inter­net con­nec­tion. These typ­ic­ally include mar­ket­ing, web design, soft­ware devel­op­ment, and freel­ance cre­at­ive work. Reas­on­able rents and the avail­ab­il­ity of visas help, too.

Former nomad Sean Busut­til points out that they often see them­selves as ‘cit­izens of the world’. No doubt many nomads will be happy to con­tra­dict Don­ald Trump’s claim that there is no such thing. Accord­ing to the main web­site for the nomad com­munity, nomads.com, digit­al nomads are pre­dom­in­antly of a pro­gress­ive out­look, with a good dash of liber­tari­an­ism. Just 3% identi­fy as conservative.

Nomads are gen­er­ally from the wealthy middle classes, well-edu­cated, and sec­u­lar; spir­itu­al­ity fea­tures strongly, but not organ­ised reli­gion to any great degree. Flex­ible pas­times such as the gym and jog­ging take pre­ced­ence over team sports or clubs.

Des­tin­a­tions are var­ied. In South Amer­ica, Medel­lin and Mex­ico City have noted nomad pop­u­la­tions. In Asia, Bangkok, Chi­ang Mai, Cang­gu, and Tokyo are favoured. In Europe, Lis­bon, Bar­celona, Lon­don, and Par­is are pop­u­lar, along­side Ber­lin. There are also many less well-known des­tin­a­tions favoured by adven­tur­ous nomads.

Tsu­g­io Makimoto and Dav­id Man­ners coined the term in 1997 in their book of the same name. They pre­dicted the growth of a transna­tion­al, hyper­mobile class of work­ers, freed by their laptops and the inter­net from the need to loc­ate in a par­tic­u­lar place to pur­sue their jobs and lives. They claim that iden­tity and com­munity are com­ing to revolve around transna­tion­al ‘tribes’ of like-minded people. These tribes, they argue, will even­tu­ally come to replace the nation in people’s allegiances.

Research on the phe­nomen­on sug­gests that nomads value this sense of free­dom. Home and nation are seen as lim­it­ing to the cul­tur­al ambi­tion of the indi­vidu­al as they build a life of their own. An aca­dem­ic study by Päivi Kan­nisto quotes a digit­al nomad named Jeff:

“When someone becomes a trav­el­ler they slowly come to real­ise that nation­al­ity no longer mat­ters, much like blood type or oth­er trivi­al things we are born with yet have no con­trol over. My home coun­try has nev­er been defined, except by pass­port. Nor­way, Canada, Amer­ica? For me, I would be unable to give a home coun­try if someone were to ask for it. Those terms simply don’t register as com­fort­able for me.”

Nation­al­ity is some­times inter­preted as mor­ally restrict­ive. Some dis­tance them­selves from the con­sumer­ism they asso­ci­ate with life back home. Tor, anoth­er respond­ent in the study, claimed: “My sense of val­ues is very dif­fer­ent from most Amer­ic­ans today. I’m a very non-mater­i­al­ist­ic per­son; I don’t buy things.”

Con­tents ^

Where’s home?

“Wherever I lay my hat, that’s my home”
_ Mar­vin Gaye

Digit­al nomads do not just work away from their nation; they work away from their home. Home has long been seen as a haven in a heart­less world; a place of suc­cour and shel­ter from the stresses asso­ci­ated with work or pub­lic life. It is also asso­ci­ated with iden­tity; a homet­own or home nation have his­tor­ic­ally been assumed to be key aspects of identity.

For some who are dis­il­lu­sioned with their soci­et­ies, glob­al nomadism provides a lit­er­al and meta­phor­ic­al dis­tance from their nation and fel­low cit­izens. The UK Brexit vote and the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump are reputed to have promp­ted some to adopt the digit­al nomad­ic life.

For the nomad, the concept of home is lim­it­ing and dis­em­power­ing. Päivi Kan­nisto quotes Andy: “I don’t need to return to a home nest like tour­ists who have noth­ing else to think about than how to get back.”

‘Home­less­ness’ — a term nor­mally asso­ci­ated with poverty or being cut adrift from soci­ety — lib­er­ates glob­al nomads to explore the world with cos­mo­pol­it­an ease. “I don’t feel like I really have a home per se,” states anoth­er respondent.

To be a nomad­ic ‘cit­izen of the world’ implies a rare free­dom. This free­dom seems to be a free­dom from the bound­ar­ies and lim­its imposed by nation­al cit­izen­ship and home. The nomad has, appar­ently, tran­scen­ded these lim­its and lives bey­ond them. But in doing so, they leave behind their capa­city to shape a soci­ety, along with oth­ers, through a polit­ic­al pro­cess with­in the nation. They leave behind a com­munity, a shared his­tory, and a ‘home’.

Con­tents ^

The place I belong

“Coun­try roads, take me home to the place I belong”
_ John Denver

Polit­ic­al philo­soph­er Han­nah Aren­dt argued that civic repub­lic­an cit­izen­ship, through which people could col­lect­ively shape their soci­ety and com­munity, marked a deep human free­dom; the free­dom to make a dif­fer­ence to our world in tan­dem with fel­low cit­izens. The ‘free­dom’ to cul­tiv­ate one’s life­style in excit­ing cul­tur­al des­tin­a­tions pales in comparison.

Civic val­ues of com­munity, loy­alty, and trust oper­ate on the basis of a ‘home’. It is at home — com­munity, region, and nation — that shared val­ues, assump­tions, struggles, and a shared his­tory make authen­t­ic com­munit­ies pos­sible, rather than tran­si­ent ones based on life­style preference.

The loss of the polit­ic­al free­dom to be fully part of a nation­al demo­cracy, and of the civic free­dom to be part of a com­munity, is the price paid for the free­dom to live footloose, out­side of the expect­a­tions, oblig­a­tions, and pos­sib­il­it­ies of home and citizenship.

The Ger­man Roman­ti­cist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote of the import­ance of ‘roots and wings’ in life. The rise of the digit­al nomad, and the sen­ti­ment sur­round­ing it, sug­gests some have lost sight of the former.

Per­haps we need to belong some­where in order to explore elsewhere.

Con­tents ^

What do you think? 

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About the author

Jim Butcher is a lec­turer, and a writer of a num­ber of books on the soci­ology and polit­ics of tour­ism. Dr Butcher blogs at Polit­ics of Tour­ism, tweets at @jimbutcher2, and is the founder of Tourism’s Hori­zon: Travel for the Mil­lions.

Featured image (top of post)

Does digit­al nomadism rep­res­ent the per­fect life, or de-root nomads leav­ing them bereft of ‘home’? A Gem­ini-gen­er­ated image.

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