Season 2, Ep. 5: Migration & technology — The rise of digital nomads

Below, you will find links to all of the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.

Media

Bearne, S. (4 Nov 2023). Digital nomads: rising number of people choose to work remotely (external link) . The Guardian.

Castrillon, C. (17 July 2022). Why the digital nomad lifestyle is on the rise (external link) . Forbes.

Chonghaile, C. (5 March 2023). Portugal: The canary in the digital nomad coal mine? (external link)  The New European.

Working online and traveling the world - digital nomads (external link) . DW Documentary.

Fernandez, C. (16 Dec 2023). Spain is the No. 1 country for digital nomads in 2024—Portugal and Norway also land in the top 10 (external link) . CNBC.

Haeck, P. & Volpicelli, G. (1 Jan 2023). Portugal’s digital nomad bubble poised to pop: Tech entrepreneurs cool on the country as locals protest against rising costs and gentrification (external link) . Politico.

Hennigan, R. (8 Feb 2023). How to become a digital nomad (external link) . Harvard Business Review.

Johnson, T. (26 June 2023). 58 Countries with digital nomad visas – The ultimate list (external link) . Nomad Girl.

K.C., H. & Triandafyllidou, A. Canada’s digital nomad program could attract tech talent – but would they settle down? (external link)  The Conversation.

Martel, J. (27 Dec 2023). What is FIRE Movement: Financial Independence, Retire Early? (external link)  TIME.

Marting, T. (23 Sept 2023). 66 Digital nomad visa countries in 2023 (external link) . Citizen Remote.

Singer, C. (11 July 2023). New Canada visa targets digital nomads to work remotely (external link) . Immigration.ca.

Witt, S. (23 May 2023). When digital nomads come to town: Cities from Canggu to Medellín are welcoming tech workers, but locals complain they’re being priced out (external link) . Rest of World.

Reports and Policy

Hooper, K. & Benton, M. (June 2022). The Future of remote work: Digital nomads and the implications for immigration systems. Migration Policy Institute.

Plumia (external link) . An umbrella project for SafetyWing's efforts to increase the global mobility rights of people everywhere. It operates as a think tank, generating research, policy, products and ideas.

Visaguide.world (external link) 

Books

Cook, D. (2021). The global remote work revolution and the future of work (external link) . In J. Liebowitz (Ed), The business of pandemics: The COVID-19 story (143-166). CRC Press.

Nash, C., Jarrahi, M. H., Sutherland, W., & Phillips, G. (2018). Digital nomads beyond the buzzword: Defining digital nomadic work and use of digital technologies (external link) . In G. Chowdhury, J. McLeod, V. Gillet, & P. Willett (Eds.), Transforming Digital Worlds (Vol. 10766, pp. 207–217). Springer International Publishing. 

Woldoff, R., & Litchfield, R. C. (2021). Digital nomads: In search of freedom, community, and meaningful work in the new economy (external link) . Oxford University Press.

Scholarly Articles

Chevtaeva, E., & Denizci-Guillet, B. (2021). Digital nomads’ lifestyles and coworkation (external link) . Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 21, 100633. 

Cook, D. (2020). The freedom trap: Digital nomads and the use of disciplining practices to manage work/leisure boundaries (external link) . Information Technology & Tourism, 22(3), 355–390. 

Cook, D. (2022). Breaking the contract: Digital nomads and the state (external link) . Critique of Anthropology, 42(3), 304–323. 

Cook, D. (2023). What is a digital nomad? Definition and taxonomy in the era of mainstream remote work (external link) . World Leisure Journal, 65(2), 256–275. 

Dreher, N., & Triandafyllidou, A. (2023). Digital nomads: Toward a future research agenda. Toronto Metropolitan Centre for Immigration and Settlement (TMCIS) and the CERC in Migration and Integration Working Paper Series No. 2034/4.

Frydman, A. A. (2022). Work and pleasure: Investigating the rise of digital nomads in Mexico (external link) . Standford Institute for Economic Policy Research Working Paper Series No. 22-31. 

Hannonen, O. (2020). In search of a digital nomad: Defining the phenomenon (external link) . Information Technology & Tourism, 22(3), 335–353. 

Jover, J., & Díaz-Parra, I. (2022). Who is the city for? Overtourism, lifestyle migration and social sustainability (external link) . Tourism Geographies, 24(1), 9–32. 

Müller, A. (2016). The digital nomad: Buzzword or research category? (external link)  Transnational Social Review, 6(3), 344–348. 

Orel, M. (2019). Coworking environments and digital nomadism: Balancing work and leisure whilst on the move (external link) . World Leisure Journal, 61(3), 215–227. 

Reichenberger, I. (2018). Digital nomads – a quest for holistic freedom in work and leisure (external link) . Annals of Leisure Research, 21(3), 364–380. 

Thompson, B. Y. (2018). Digital nomads: Employment in the online gig economy (external link) . Glocalism: Journal of Culture, Politics and Innovation, 1. 

Thompson, B. Y. (2019). The Digital nomad lifestyle: (Remote) work/leisure balance, privilege, and constructed community (external link) . International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure, 2(1–2), 27–42.

Maggie Perzyna: Welcome to Borders & Belonging, a podcast that explores regional migration issues in a global context. This series is produced by CERC Migration in collaboration with Lead Podcasting. I'm Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University. Today, we're turning our attention to people often described as digital nomads. Picture this, a small but steadily growing group of today's knowledge workers who've unshackled themselves from the traditional office. They're using technology, not just to work, but to live life on their terms. These are the digital nomads, and their lifestyle is turning heads and raising questions. We'll delve deep into the changing nature of work, exploring why the problems of the new economy are compelling many to seek alternative work arrangements. It's not just about earning a paycheck. It's about crafting a life that blends work, travel and freedom. In a moment, two esteemed researchers will help us unpack the changing work landscape, and how digital nomads are impacting the local communities they visit. But first, we'll hear from a former digital nomad about what it was like to take her laptop on a trip through Italy, Turkey, and Greece. Holly Vipond knew that she'd get homesick. So before she left her home in Canada, she prepared accordingly.

Holly Vipond: I actually had bought myself a little pendant to take with me to remind myself of home, so that I could have something that would kind of ground me and be a little piece of home to take with me.

Maggie Perzyna: The pendant features a First Nations design of an Orca, an image that reminded Holly of her home in North Vancouver, British Columbia. But much to her surprise,

Holly Vipond: I didn't actually need it. So, I didn't actually feel as homesick as I expected to.

Maggie Perzyna: Holly began her adventure as a digital nomad in March 2022. But it was something she had been contemplating since the beginning of the pandemic.

Holly Vipond: I had quit my previous office job at the beginning of the lockdown. And so I had to find kind of a filler job in the meantime during the pandemic. And so I was working at home, teaching English online and actually tutoring for a variety of subjects and had kind of cobbled together an income. And so I was working online at home, in my apartment by myself, crawling up the walls like everybody else. And then I started kind of meeting people online. And I was meeting other English teachers online. And they were living in places like Mexico and South Africa and Thailand and living much more economically than I was in Vancouver.

Maggie Perzyna: Vancouver has the most expensive rental market in Canada. So it's no wonder that Holly considered following in the footsteps of the other English teachers she met online. 

Holly Vipond: And I was thinking to myself, well as soon as things start to open up again, and I can travel, why not take my laptop on the road and go see a few places that I've never seen before. And it will actually cost less than what I'm paying to live in Vancouver.

Maggie Perzyna: And that's exactly what she did. Over the course of eight months, Holly worked and traveled through Italy, Turkey and Greece. She did some sightseeing, practiced different languages, and even swam in a volcanic crater lake. And everywhere she went, she made friends.

Holly Vipond: There are a couple of ways that I connected with other people. One was through the places that I stayed. So, I stayed in Airbnbs, in shared Airbnbs, and I met a lot of really cool people that way. And I loved it and some of them I'm still in touch with a year later. But the other way was through Facebook groups. So. I'm in a couple of different Facebook groups. One of them is for digital nomads over 40 and another one that's for solo female travelers. And that one is really cool because women will basically post, you know, 'I'm going to be in this city on these dates. Who wants to hang out?' And so it's fun things like, you know, the first weekend I was in Athens, I had four other women to hang out with. And we went for dinner and we hung out in Athens.

Maggie Perzyna: Holly felt welcomed by fellow nomads and locals alike. In fact, she got the sense that her decision to work abroad was actually helping the local economies.

Holly Vipond: They really appreciated the tourist dollars. I went, beginning of 2022. You know, the borders were just starting to open. And so the economy, the tourist economy was really suffering that. And so I think the places that I went, they really wanted tourism to come back. 

Maggie Perzyna: Despite an all around positive experience, by December of 2022, Holly knew it was time to go home. 

Holly Vipond: I was really torn because I wanted to keep going. I wanted to see more places. But at the same time I was just so homesick for Vancouver. There's, you know, there's no place like home.

Maggie Perzyna: But Holly has no regrets about her time as a digital nomad. And she encourages others to try it if and when they can. 

Holly Vipond: I think that it's one of those things where you have to kind of take the opportunity when you have it and just do it and not think about the fear or the risk or whatever. And if it doesn't work out, you can always come home again. But at least give it a shot. Because you might never get another opportunity

Maggie Perzyna: Thank you so much to Holly Vipond for sharing some of her experiences from her time as a digital nomad. Today, we're going to look beyond the glitzy social media posts showcasing an ideal life merging work and travel. Joining me are Professor Anna Triandafyllidou and Dave Cook. Anna is the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University. Dave is a PhD researcher at University College London, conducting an eight year study on the lives and work practices of those living a digital nomadic lifestyle. What defines a digital nomad? Anna?

Anna Triandafyllidou: Well, it's not an easy phenomenon to define but let's say someone who works, whose actual place of residence is different from their place of work. So, normally, this someone nominally lives in a country different than where he or she is working. In addition to that the person is moving frequently. So, there are of course, disagreements about how frequently this should be. But let's say at least twice or three times in a year, the person is moving locations. So, let's say there are two defining elements: one is your place of work and place of residence are two different places in two different countries; and in addition, you don't stay put at your place of residence, but actually travel between countries. But as I said, this is a definition that can be adapted or can be kind of discussed, because some people say so if I move within the same country, does this count? Or if I move two times a year, does this count? If I have a stable basis to which I return after my two, three months, then somewhere else? Does this make me less of a digital nomad? And I think these are kind of empirical questions rather than analytical ones.

Maggie Perzyna: Why has this style of work been embraced by millennials in particular?

Dave Cook: Oohh [laughs]. Good question. So, I've been running an eight year study, and I started my research in 2015. And back in those days, the kind of earlier days of digital nomadism, most of my research participants were millennials. There were many in their 20s and their 30s. And they were working as what we sometimes call 'knowledge workers'. So, the kind of job categories were, like writer, computer programmer. It was skewing quite male in the early days, where there were quite a lot of male computer programmers who were early adopters of the lifestyle and people that could run location independent businesses as well. So, there were two main sub-categories in the early days. So, people that were freelancers, essentially, and people that were actually running a business that could be done from anywhere. I think in terms of talking about the digital nomad definition, as Anna was saying, it's hard to pin down, it has changed. And I think it has changed somewhat since the pandemic. And I would say the most basic definition that I use though, is somebody who works whilst traveling instead of traveling for work. And I think that is quite an important distinction.

Maggie Perzyna: Can you share examples of industries or professions that are particularly well suited for a digital nomad lifestyle?

Anna Triandafyllidou: Well, certainly I think David very well outlined the industries or professions that were particularly suited for a digital nomad lifestyle. Certainly, yeah, exactly all the people who work in the IT industry. Also people who could run a business from, like digitally, how can I say, 'remotely', although this might seem to many of us, a bit awkward. But I would add also, another series of professionals like translators, copy editors, artists. I mean we've heard about digital executive assistants these days. So, all sorts of services that do not require manual work and do not require personal presence. So, if you think again, tourism, catering, retail, these are not digital nomads' professions. I think what has changed with a pandemic is many more people than before have contemplated the possibility of living in a place other than their usual place of work for a longer time, not exceptionally, not because something happened and we have to be somewhere else for a week or two. Having said this, I think though, that what we have also realized after the pandemic is that there is an aspect of the 'in-person presence' of work that has also to do with this knowledge-based or digital service economy and that cannot be catered for through the absence. However, the flexibility is now there, the possibility is there. So, more people are contemplating digital nomadism.

Maggie Perzyna: What are the benefits and challenges faced by knowledge workers who choose a digital nomad lifestyle? Dave?

Dave Cook: Yeah, that's a great question. The first paper that I published, which presented the first four years of results, I titled 'The Freedom Trap', because it specifically looked at how digital nomads juggle work-life balance, because the dream, or the utopian vision is that they get to travel and they get to integrate all of these different parts of their lives and experience new exciting places. But one of the things that I found after the first year or two of research, were increasing reports of people experiencing burnout and other mental health issues. And one of the things that I found is that there was an extra aspect of invisible work in which digital nomads were having to self-discipline themselves, and carve out a livable routine throughout the day, and throughout the week. They were, you know, starting off by rejecting things like the 9-5 and office work. But increasingly, they were going to places like co-working spaces, which is really just a reframed version of the office. And one of the reasons that they told me they were going to these places was to stop just working in their Airbnb or their serviced apartment and trying to get a structure and a rhythm to the day and to prevent overwork. So, you know, it's quite interesting. One of the paradoxes I didn't fully understand at the beginning of my research was why people would travel 1000s of miles to the other side of the world and then go to an office effectively.

Anna Triandafyllidou: Yeah, this sounds a bit paradoxical, right? 

Dave Cook: Yeah.

Anna Triandafyllidou: I would like to add to this, to the [question about] benefits and challenges. From a migration perspective, the benefits include what has been termed 'geoarbitrage'. So, that you might be working in a country with higher salaries, but spending your money in a country with a lower cost of living. So, your money gets you farther, but also the challenges I think alongside of what Dave said of looking for a routine. I think there are several issues like health coverage. Presumably you might have some health coverage, at least in your country of citizenship, although most countries have health coverage based on residence. So, that could be tricky. Then the question of overall welfare contributions. Maybe often we imagine at least that digital nomads are young people, so they're not yet very concerned with their health issues. And they're not very much thinking about retirement. But these are also issues that one needs to solve if one wants to follow a digital nomadic lifestyle. And likewise, I think the overall question of participation, whether it's civic or political participation. As we know, being a citizen, it's not just about voting every four years or so but it involves being involved with your community. For instance, your trade union in the past. Some other sort of collectivity, and you're moving every three months or four months, probably you don't have the time to engage with any sort of civic group, even if it were people who like singing, for instance. So, I think these are some of the challenges that haven't been fully explored. Likewise, from the perspective, of course, of the states, whether the states where these people are not present or the states that host them.

Maggie Perzyna: There's a growing list of countries that offer digital nomad visas. So Barbados, for example, started offering a visa in 2020, to attract knowledge workers during the pandemic. Can you tell me about some of the policies and enticements being adopted by destinations to track digital nomads? Anna? 

Anna Triandafyllidou: Yeah, actually, during and after the pandemic, there's been a proliferation of what has been actually entitled 'Digital Nomad Visas', which is interesting, because we might have thought that this was more of a jargon used by the people themselves, or by us researchers. And in those cases, what is characteristic of these policies is that people who would satisfy the criteria, which usually involve a certain level of monthly income, or showing some sort of economic independence, when you move into the digital nomad visa country, they're also generally people are not allowed to work locally, they're not allowed to earn money locally. So, it is clear that the countries are looking to track people, which these countries believe would earn somewhere else. So they wouldn't, so to speak, steal jobs from locals, but would spend their money locally. So, they would pay for the rent, pay for their food, you know, pay for their entertainment or any other expenses. The expectation is that these people are relatively well off. So, they're bringing some sort of, if I may call it that way, 'sustainable tourism', or 'slow tourism', the terms by which some people would refer to this phenomenon. The question is, whether I mean, what we have seen in recent studies that these digital nomad visas are already dying out as soon as they were published because there's not so many people engaged in this kind of, as they would call this, ‘working while traveling’, rather than traveling for work. And one wonders whether also these visas are some sort of, how can I say, ramification of what has been called, 'golden visas'. And golden visas are the cases where a country allows you to go in and stay there, if you bring in a certain level of investment, which could be an investment for business, or it could be an investment into real estate. So one wonders whether this was more the thinking of the countries rather than any sort of 'future of work' forward thinking.

Dave Cook: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. I mean, the visa that you spoke about that was launched in 2020, was the 'Barbados Welcome Stamp'. And that was the first so-called remote work or digital nomad visa that was launched. Since then, as Anna hinted at, you know, depending on which website you go to, that lists all of the digital nomad and remote work visas that are available, it seems to be that there are between 40 and more than 100 available. I think the most important thing to say is that they're all conceptualized differently. So, if you look at some of the early digital nomad and remote work visas that were launched in 2020, they were from Caribbean island states. Now, these countries during the pandemic were suffering from under tourism instead of over tourism, so it was a knee jerk reaction to that. But these countries also have a very long established relationship with high net-worth individuals. So, if you look at some of their visas for the Caribbean island states, the monthly income that you need to apply for one is higher than, you know, some European countries or Eastern European countries. So, every country is conceptualizing themselves differently. And I think different governments have different understanding of what a digital nomad is. I was called in to give some evidence to the UK government last year because there was a lot of noise about digital nomad visas. And they wanted to know if it was going to be a problem about taxing UK citizens if they left the country. And what I got from that encounter was a really strong sense about how much governments simply don't understand about this lifestyle. Sometimes when countries launch a digital nomad visa or remote work visa, they are doing it as some kind of marketing exercise. And one of the things that's been really interesting is sometimes there's been this idea that a country might launch a digital nomad or remote work visa. So in Bali, this happened, and it was announced, and it was actually the tourist department that sent out the press release first, but it's actually immigration departments that have to implement these things. So, it's really, really interesting to see this process of tourism and immigration being merged in some kind of way. And I don't really know the full ramifications of the questions that that poses. But Anna was saying that quite a lot of digital nomad visas are kind of failing or, you know, fading away. And I think it's because partly we don't have a very clear international definition of what a digital nomad is in the first place. And that's one of the reasons why I wrote my recent paper, 'What is a Digital Nomad', because the motivation behind that was to try and get countries to talk to each other to have an agreed definition of what it was to be a digital nomad. Now whether that happens or not is another question.

Maggie Perzyna: So, David, your research has taken you to places that attract digital nomads. How do digital nomads influence the local communities they settle in and what kind of impact does this have?

Dave Cook: Yeah, so my research has mainly been in Southeast Asia and Thailand. So, I've been to other digital nomad locations such as Lisbon, but that's really where my expertise is. But what I would say is, in terms of impacts on, you know, local countries or host countries, I think you have to look at it on a location by location basis, because what's happening in Thailand is very different to what is happening in Portugal, in Lisbon, for example. So, just to give the Chiang Mai example, before the pandemic, when I was conducting research between 2015 and 2018, Chiang Mai was seen as digital nomads center, and some people were calling Chiang Mai, 'the digital nomad capital of the world'. But the numbers of digital nomads was still quite small. So, in terms of locals, they weren't really making a distinction between who was a digital nomad and who was a tourist. However, to digital nomads, they would spend quite a lot of effort and get quite agitated if you did refer to them as a tourist. And I've had some really interesting ethnographic conversations with digital nomads that spend a lot of effort into trying to make sure that you or the locals understand the distinction. And just to give an example, I was in a coffee shop in Chiang Mai and a digital nomad was talking about the WiFi speed and was saying to the Thai coffee shop owner, "I'm not a tourist. I'm a digital nomad. I'm working here, I'm staying for longer." And I went and spoke to that coffee shop owner afterwards. And I said, "what did you make of that conversation about this person saying that they weren't a tourist"? And the coffee shop owner said, "Well, you know, they're staying for a short amount of time, and they're all farang, they go to the same places". The distinction didn't really matter so much to that specific coffee shop owner that I spoke to. And one of the things that I also say, because digital nomads are talking about trying to create more in-depth, meaningful connections with local communities by staying longer. And one of the things that nomads are talking about at the moment is dating locations. And in that respect, they're polyamorous, and when I speak to locals, they always get the sense that they're going to be left in some kind of way. It doesn't really matter if it's two weeks or three months, it's time limited. And there's only so much that you can absorb or contribute to a local culture even within three months. And then if you're staying longer than that, and you're applying for a longer term visa, then you're kind of becoming an expat in some kind of way. But that is an interesting area to talk about because digital nomads do talk quite a lot of giving back to local communities. I think we need to have some really meaningful conversations about how that would really happen in practice.

Maggie Perzyna: From an academic perspective, digital nomadism disrupts traditional categories in some really interesting ways. Like defining who is a migrant and who is a traveler. Anna, you've invoked the concept of 'nomadlands' in your recent paper with Nick Dreyer. How does this idea disrupt the notion of the nation state?

Anna Triandafyllidou: Yeah, that's an interesting question. Well, I think following on the heels of what Dave just said, digital nomads might feel they are temporarily members of the community where they provisionally settled, but actually, they don't settle, they just stay. But probably the locals think otherwise. And I think it is important to pay attention to the fact that different people in different sectors in the communities of destination will have different interests and different views towards digital nomads. So, someone who has a coffee shop or an Airbnb or a serviced apartment or a restaurant might welcome digital nomads a lot, but someone who is trying to rent an apartment at an affordable rent might, you know, be really annoyed by the presence of digital nomads, because they're driving locals out of the rental market. Someone who, for instance, you know, lives a much more sedentary life may not even notice that these digital nomads are there. Except they're using, I don't know, transportation. So, it's, I think it very much depends, again, and I think Dave mentioned that, as to how many are the digital nomads at a local community? What kind of communities is that? Because I think Chiang Mai is very different from Lisbon, which is a capital city with a very strong economy of its own, so it doesn't expect to live off digital nomads. I think it is important to acknowledge the diversity of interests and views at the local community. And Maggie you mentioned that as well, in relation to kind of tourism and other related activity. For me, from a migration and citizenship perspective, what I find most worrying, in a sense, is precisely this breakdown of the relationship between the individual and the community that digital nomadism implies. So, you're not a member of any community except for this imagined digital community of digital nomads. And that has important repercussions for you, and it has important repercussions, at the end of the day, for the community where you live. 

Dave Cook: I was just wanting to build on one of Anna's points about community. And I just want to say that I think one of the most important aspects of my study is the fact that it's been going on for a number of years. I'm in the eighth year at the moment, and I think I wouldn't, I would have struggled to have got any meaningful data had it been less than half of a decade, because one of the things that I've noticed is at the beginning of the journeys, many digital nomads, really, I'm talking about being location independent and wanting to move from place to place. Over time, that pattern slows down and the term 'slowmad' has emerged over recent years. But also, digital nomads discover the importance of community, you know, once it becomes absent in their lives. So, they often times experiment with the lifestyle because they're excited about being location-independent and exploring new places. You know, the issues around loneliness and burnout do arise over time. And then it's as if they've discovered community for the first time. But that is a process that happens over a number of years. Also, I just want to add, Anna was talking about Lisbon. Digital nomads, I think are still relatively small in number in terms of Lisbon. Lisbon is a very specific case because it is a global city. It is a capital city, but it has a relatively small population around 500,000. And it was already experiencing over-tourism post pandemic and migration and particularly from the United States where people from the United States realized that they could make that money go much further in Portugal. So, that's another form of geo-arbitrage. And then digital nomadism is just an additional pressure. And that's one of the reasons why there have been protests and you know, some protesters have blamed predominantly digital nomads, but one of the reasons that they noticed them in Lisbon is because they're going into areas where, you know, sort of like outside of the city center where rents are sometimes cheaper, and then impacting the local housing markets, not just in the traditional tourist areas, but in the suburbs. 

Anna Triandafyllidou: I would like to add, you know, there is often, how can I say, a gap between the passport and what a person looks like versus Canada or the United States or also the United Kingdom are very diverse countries. But if a person with a Canadian passport goes somewhere where they assume that a Canadian is someone who is white, and the person is non-white, they can you know, be faced with quite surreptitious racism or strange conversations presuming that for instance, this this person is a migrant worker or for instance, a domestic worker, a care provider, etc. Because I would think the imagination that they have, whether in Barbados or Lisbon, about who is a digital nomad, comes with certain phenotypical characteristics. Having said that, I wanted to go back to the question of the digital nomad visas, and just highlight that, of course, there are a number of small island states that have these visas. But there's also, for instance, 11 out of 28 EU member states that have such visas, which, of course, includes Southern European countries like Portugal and Greece and Cyprus, but they also, for instance, included Hungary and Latvia and Romania. And similarly, you know, several of the countries that offer digital nomad visas are high income countries in general, or upper middle income countries. So, it's really very much a mixed bag on the part of the countries that seek to attract those highly coveted individuals believing they are similar types of migrants like the golden visa holders. And on this, I would like to add, for instance, that Portugal has been for nearly 10 years kind of advertising, I would say quite aggressively in inverted commas, its own golden visa for people who are retired, or who can bring some money in real estate or investment, offering very low tax rates. So, I wonder to what extent what seems to be a digital nomad issue, is much more of a 'sunset migration' issue, as we call it. The question of people who have perhaps retired relatively early from another country, whether that country is again in our imagination, Germany, Sweden, or Canada, who find in Lisbon a very agreeable lifestyle, really a beautiful city, I also agreed to that [laughs], Lisbon is one of my preferred citie and in a place where their money gets them farther. I think we need perhaps to look at digital nomad visas and the overall phenomenon within a broader context of desirable non-working migration that has been emerging in the last few years.

Dave Cook: Yeah, yeah. I mean, definitely, I mean, a lot of the academic literature into digital nomadism comes under, you know, what academics called 'lifestyle migration'. And it definitely, digital nomadism definitely does overlap with some of those. So, when I was in Lisbon earlier this year, I was in Caxias and I was walking along the beach and I saw this really interesting cluster of people under sunbeds, and they had this big sign, and they were celebrating the beginning of their 'FIRE lifestyle'. And if you don't know what FIRE means, it means, "financial independence retire early". And these people look to be in their 20s or early 30s. You know, that's another kind of subcategory of lifestyle migration or as a new type of lifestyle. And those kind of conversations do happen quite a lot on digital nomad visas. What was really interesting is I was looking at the people walking past and the people in the service industry serving them. And I just wondered what they thought of this, these 20-somethings that were retiring early and advertising on the beach, you know, how relatable is that? It kind of like made me a little bit uncomfortable. And, you know, that was certainly an interesting, slightly dystopian highlight to that day.

Maggie Perzyna: Okay so maybe as we start to conclude, where's home for a digital nomad? Where do they actually choose to participate in society? Just like everyday things like receiving mail, paying taxes, developing a personal life, Dave?

Dave Cook: Yeah it's interesting. There's two more categories of digital nomads. The people that are just trying out the lifestyle because it's exciting, but there is definitely a subcategory of digital nomads who are very ideologically, saying, I'm a digital nomad. So, there's a company called 'SafetyWing' that sells travel and health insurance for digital nomads. And they've set up an idea called 'Plumia', which is to launch an internet country. And they're talking about the 'end of countries' and 'the end of home' in that kind of traditional way. And I think that's quite interesting that people are having those quite philosophical conversations. What I'll say in practice, is that digital nomads might start off by, you know, posting blogs about, you know, traveling with only carry-on luggage, so that they can effortlessly move around the world. You know, some people kind of like blog about how little stuff they need, and they're practicing minimalism. But one of the things that I find over time is that they do accumulate more stuff. And you know, sometimes I find that digital nomads, if they have done quite well financially, suddenly, I'll see a notification on Facebook with a post saying that, hey, I've just bought a house and it isn't that great. So, those kinds of things do happen over time. But there definitely is an ideological rejection of this idea that I'm location independent, where I own property. Digital nomads talk quite a lot about the 'subscription economy'. So, that they could rent everything. You know, Airbnb is a good example of that. But over time, believe me that does change. 

Maggie Perzyna: Looking to the future, do you see this trend evolving or slowing down as more employers request at least part-time return to the office? Anna?

Anna Triandafyllidou: I think this trend is not so much related to, you know, return to the office. For a broader category of workers, I think, yes, the pandemic made it something that more people can think about and can contemplate even though the question of whether they take action is a big one. And that is generally a question in migration. Many people contemplate migration, but don't do anything about it ever. So, similarly, I think post-pandemic, many people think oh, wouldn't it be nice if I could do this work from a nice countryside landscape or a beach? I think this relates more to kind of broader processes of socio-economic transformation related also to the availability of technology that facilitates that. Personally, I don't think it will ever become significant in terms of a quantitatively significant phenomenon. I think there will remain a bit like the FIRE, you know, early retirement migration and this phenomenon that we'll perhaps [?] here and there. 10 years ago we used to talk about the German and British, you know, retired people in the Balearic Islands in Spain. For a variety of reasons, maybe this is still the case, but it's kind of much lower in numbers. And I would see this kind of a trend. Neither a big increase nor a complete die out And I think as David mentioned, probably most digital nomads do this for a period. Enjoy it and then it was good as it lasted. You go back to whatever could be called the more normal work and life routine.

Dave Cook: Yeah, I think, you know, as social scientists, we can become a bit obsessed about categories. So, we've talked about expats, digital nomads, tourists and what the separation is, between those. I think digital nomads are really interesting, because what digital nomads are doing today, you know, might be absorbed or aspects of it might be absorbed into mainstream culture in the coming years. I think in terms of the impacts, if you go to places like Lisbon or Chiang Mai, it might be quite difficult to come across digital nomads, but one of the things that you will see is the proliferation of co-working spaces and co-living spaces. So, if you look at Chiang Mai, there are dozens, dozens of these, and in 2015 there were none. So, you know, that is quite a big change. There's this big discussion that's being had about how it's going to affect hotels, and how hotels are going to, you know, sort of like change and adapt more for being a hybrid working and holiday spaces. I think you know how digital nomads talk about holidays is really interesting because a lot of digital nomads say that they don't take them at all because they see holidays, as in the words of one digital nomad as "binging on leisure", where a lot of digital nomads are trying to integrate different parts of their lives. But yeah, I think one of the really interesting things that's going to emerge is that remote work has already become normalized post-pandemic. And I think this is why we needed to come up with a definition of how often people move. And in my last paper, the baseline definition for being a digital nomad is somebody that moves to at least three locations a year that isn't their own home, or a second home or a friends and family member's home. And I think that is going to become much more normalized. And so are we going to have a new category? I'm not quite sure. And are digital nomads going to stay longer? And, you know, when I started this research project, I was working with other anthropologists that were researching migration, which touches upon quite different questions, you know, this on the surface looks to be, you know, quite a fluffy research project about a utopian lifestyle. But I think as more people do it, I think it does overlap more with migration. And I think we, you know, it's really, really interesting that Anna, who's a specialist in migration is interested in this area, I'd be really interested in having some quite detailed conversations actually about where the overlaps are. At the beginning of my research project I wanted to say, look, I'm not going anywhere near migration studies, because that was just too problematic to kind of like merge that with lifestyle migration, but now I think I need to be talking to migration specialists. Absolutely.

Maggie Perzyna: Thanks to Anna Triandafyllidou and Dave Cook for joining me today. And thank you for listening! This is a CERC Migration podcast produced in collaboration with Lead Podcasting. If you enjoyed the episode, subscribe to Borders & Belonging on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information on digital nomads, please visit the show notes. I'm Maggie Perzyna. Thanks for listening.