Anthropology Digital Nomads
by
Fabiola Mancinelli
  • LAST MODIFIED: 07 January 2025
  • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0306

Introduction

Digital nomads are individuals who combine remote work from anywhere that has Internet connection with ongoing international travel, leisure, and multi-local living. The term, coined in the early 1990s to indicate the irruption of portable technologies into leisure travel, gained substantial recognition post-pandemic when remote work became ubiquitous, drawing attention to a more widespread possibility of turning location-independence into a way of life for many. Although the experts in telecommunication and computing had already foreseen the potential of technology to free individuals from the constraints of geography, it was not until the mid-2010s that this emerging lifestyle started attracting academic attention, with initial research focusing on defining the phenomenon and its boundaries. The genesis of the digital nomads as a societal phenomenon can be traced back to a variety of sociocultural factors, including advancement in consumer technologies and Internet connectivity, evolving work arrangements, the growth of global tourism facilitated by the development of transport, the pervasive reach of the English language, and, last but not least, the social acceptance of mobile lifestyles. This trend signifies a blurring of traditional distinctions between work and vacation, challenging established binaries in social spheres like production/consumption, tourism/migration, and work/leisure, often experienced as distinct in time and space. The growing scholarship on digital nomadism fosters interdisciplinary dialogue, including anthropology, tourism, media and information technologies, organization studies, geography, sociology, business, and law. Within anthropology, it prompts reflection on the meanings of work, mobility, home, organization, and belonging while opening debates about the impacts of their relative privilege on locales. Beyond being a cultural phenomenon, digital nomads constitute a dynamic ecosystem of markets and services within the digital economy, where they simultaneously act as consumers and producers. As a societal trend, digital nomads epitomize individualization and increasing depoliticization, while their work practices challenge established values of labor and productivity within the life course, prompting scholars to ponder the future of work. Existing scholarship has prioritized the digital nomad’s perspective rather than the institutional or corporate management perspective. Likewise, studies on the impacts on local communities or the leveraging of local destinations are still scant. This selective bibliography reflects these gaps, while simultaneously attempting to identify different strands of research contributing to a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon, maintaining a focus on critical and empirically informed approaches.

Reference Works

Digital nomads have emerged as a compelling and expanding scholarly topic, capturing the interest of social scientists at large and, particularly, anthropologists. The term’s inaugural mention is rooted in theory, credited to Makimoto and Manners 1997, the authors of which based their prediction of a future lifestyle on the popularization of mobile devices. The first empirical exploration surfaced more than a decade later, in the mid-2010s, when MacRae 2016 recognized the presence of a new cohort of long-term tourists in Bali. Early reference works, such as Hannonen 2020, laid the groundwork to define the phenomenon. A recurrent feature in ethnographic accounts of the digital nomad lifestyle is a critical examination of their often self-celebratory narrative of freedom. In Mancinelli 2020, the author contends that the digital nomad lifestyle is not merely an alternative choice that challenges the established societal norms. Instead of idealizing the rhetoric of freedom associated with mobility, she suggests a more critical examination of the structural privileges inherent in the digital nomadic way of life. This involves an exploration of how these privileges enable digital nomads to strategically navigate and adapt to the conditions imposed by neoliberal governance. Mancinelli and Germann Molz 2024 further advances this argument by delving into the discretional visa regimes applied by nation-states in their effort to attract this highly skilled autonomous workforce as potential resident consumers. Cook 2020 sheds light on the potential “freedom trap” inherent in managing the delicate boundaries between leisure and work. Similarly, Green 2020 expresses concern about boundary challenging, particularly when performing work from leisure destinations. The three most comprehensive monographs provide different perspectives on the phenomenon. Woldoff and Litchfield 2021 offers an empirically informed but rather descriptive collection of life stories. Germann Molz 2021 breaks new ground by spotlighting families’ experiences, with a specific focus on their unconventional education practices. Thompson 2021 takes a critical standpoint, interpreting the digital nomads’ mobile choice as a consequence of the structural precarity of the industrialized countries from which they originate.

  • Cook, David. 2020. The freedom trap: Digital nomads and the use of disciplining practices to manage work/leisure boundaries. Information Technology and Tourism 22:355–390.

    DOI: 10.1007/s40558-020-00172-4

    An original longitudinal anthropological study drawing on four years of fieldwork in co-working spaces in two digital nomads’ hotspots in Thailand. The author interviews mostly educated millennials under thirty-five from the United States, continental Europe, and the United Kingdom, tracking their individual trajectories over time and revealing the gaps between their imagined world of work, the lived everyday practice, and the strategies they use to adapt to a constantly changing environment.

  • Germann Molz, Jennie. 2021. The world is our classroom: Extreme parenting and the rise of worldschooling. New York: New York Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.18574/nyu/9781479891689.001.0001

    The digital nomads’ lifestyle as a family implies withdrawing the children from the formal education system and combining travel with forms of immersive and experiential learning popularly referred to as worldschooling. The digital nomad parents profiled in the book are eager to cultivate their children’s entrepreneurial skills and sensibilities. The book offers an ethnographic exploration of this educational philosophy through a mobile virtual ethnographic approach that blends the analysis of online travel blogs and social media sites with interviews conducted during a year of travel to worldschoolers’ popular destinations.

  • Green, Paul. 2020. Disruptions of self, place and mobility: Digital nomads in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Mobilities 15.3: 431–445.

    DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2020.1723253

    Based primarily on ethnographic fieldwork in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the article examines the lifestyle and mobility pathways of digital nomads through a twofold notion of disruption: on the one hand, as a radical expression of a flexible and new way of life that breaks free from established conventions and, on the other, as a subtle unsettling of historical formations of work and tourism as separate and sometimes opposed practices.

  • Hannonen, Olga. 2020. In search of a digital nomad: Defining the phenomenon. Information Technology & Tourism 22:335–353.

    DOI: 10.1007/s40558-020-00177-z

    A theoretical essay attempting a definition of the phenomenon, it discusses the factors contributing to the growth of digital nomadism, such as globalization, technological advancements, and flexible working arrangements. The article highlights the importance of understanding the constraints and challenges faced by digital nomads in terms of mobility regimes and lifestyle choices.

  • MacRae, Graeme. 2016. Community and cosmopolitanism in the new Ubud. Annals of Tourism Research 59:16–29.

    DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2016.03.005

    The first academic article to document the presence of digital nomads through an analysis of the transformation of tourism in Ubud, Bali. The author argues that traditional categories of tourism studies are not sufficient to grasp the complex socioeconomic dynamics created by the presence of a growing community of “resident tourists.” It states that Ubud provides the structural conditions for the “hope” of cosmopolitanism.

  • Makimoto, Tsugio, and David Manners. 1997. Digital nomad. Chichester, UK: Wiley.

    This speculative, though forward-thinking book envisions the ways portable technologies would shape people’s working lives in the twenty-first century, allowing for an untethered lifestyle. Makimoto and Manners reflect on the effects that such massive technological changes will have on the mainstream sedentary lifestyle and the organization of nation-states, arguing that they would dilute the power of citizenship, bringing governments to compete for citizens and taxes.

  • Mancinelli, Fabiola. 2020. Digital nomads: Freedom, responsibility and the neoliberal order. Information Technology & Tourism 22:417–437.

    DOI: 10.1007/s40558-020-00174-2

    Frames the emerging phenomenon within the lens of lifestyle mobilities and individualization theories, arguing than digital nomadism is not an alternative lifestyle challenging the status quo but rather an opportunistic adaptation to the neoliberal order. The study provides ethnographic evidence on how digital nomads’ self-realization projects take advantage of privileged nationalities to navigate the global inequalities of the capitalist system.

  • Mancinelli, Fabiola, and Jennie Germann Molz. 2024. Moving with and against the state: Digital nomads and frictional mobility regimes. Mobilities 19.2: 189–207.

    DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2023.2209825

    Richly theorized article examining how digital nomads adopt reflexive bypass maneuvers of self-governance that allow them to achieve their lifestyle goals in the shadow of state-imposed mobility regulations. It discusses special visa programs to attract digital nomads, showing how nation-states foster commodified forms of citizenship to capture long-term depoliticized spending residents and professional talents.

  • Thompson, Beverly Yuen. 2021. Digital nomads living on the margins: Remote-working laptop entrepreneurs in the gig economy. Bingley, UK: Emerald.

    DOI: 10.1108/9781800715455

    An influential critical appraisal of the digital nomads’ lifestyle, highlighting the connections between mobile online work and the gig economy. Using ethnographic research at conferences on nomads and sociological theory, the author tackles the social implications of a mobile lifestyle, exploring their (often precarious) employments; the ideological use of positive psychology to market the lifestyle; the themes of privilege, inequality, and leisure; and the ways they build communities.

  • Woldoff, Rachel A., and Robert C. Litchfield. 2021. Digital nomads: In search of meaningful work in the new economy. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190931780.001.0001

    Written by two scholars interested in the future of work and using insights from sociology, business, and technology, the book provides several vivid ethnographic portraits of Euro-Americans and Australians living in Bali to pursue a more meaningful working life.

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