The Privilege of Movement
A Global Social Safety Net
Hey friends 👋
Greetings from the Big Apple!
We left mystical Mexico last week and arrived in magnificent Manhattan where we’ll be for a whole month. If you’re here too, let us know 🙋🙋♀️
Whilst we are approaching our time in New York with our usual nomad sensibilities, we’re mainly here to visit Corina’s sister and her partner, so we’re treating this particular destination as an opportunity to take stock of our journey so far, recharge and get inspired ready for what comes next: Asia.
As you know, me and Corina have been working remotely and living nomadically since 2022, and following last week’s post about nomad loneliness, today we want to delve into an issue that's often overlooked in the rapidly growing nomad movement: insurance.
In particular, we want to share updates about the relationship we’re building with our insurance company, SafetyWing.
We've been using SafetyWing for a few months now, and it's been a game-changer. Founded in 2018, SafetyWing is a Y Combinator startup that aims to provide nomads with a "global social safety net." This includes income stabilisation, remote retirement, global life insurance, disability coverage, virtual healthcare, and more.
With predictions that there will be a billion nomads by 2035 and an increasing number of people living nomadically each year, it's clear that SafetyWing is addressing a growing need.
But their mission is even more ambitious. They are building Plumia, the world's first internet country, with the moonshot mission to extend global mobility rights to everyone on earth.
Plumia is not just about providing better mobility options for nomads like us, it's about fundamentally rethinking what it means to be a citizen, and creating a new type of country that benefits all of its citizens equally. Where you’re born has a huge bearing on where you’re able to travel and the opportunities available to you.
Look at the difference in regulations governing immigration between Mexico and the US, for example. Mexico has opened its borders, even during COVID, and allows anybody, including US citizens, to reside in the country for up to 180 days without an application process, a privilege many nomads use to permanently live in Mexico, continuously renewing their passport stamp by leaving the country and returning just a day later.
By contrast, Trump-era policies in the US make immigration prohibitively costly, both bureaucratically and financially, for non-US citizens. In extreme cases, families have been separated, kids have been detained in cages, and people have died during their detention and deportation from the States.
This disparity, which is largely the result of where people just happen to have been born, is at the heart of local peoples’ discomfort with the rise of digital nomadism, and the awkward questions it raises about who wins and who loses in today’s globalised world.
While Plumia’s current focus is on serving nomads who are likely to come from advanced economies with powerful passports, Plumia's ultimate goal is socially oriented. They want to extend the right to mobility to everyone on earth, allowing people to enjoy better access to remote employment opportunities and the privilege and freedom of movement.
The Plumia project is fascinating, especially when it comes to what it means for our traditional understanding of nationhood, taxes, and voting. SafetyWing is even developing a Plumia passport, which could revolutionise the way we think about travel and identity.
For me and Corina, as digital nomads looking to build our own travel creator business and wondering how (and where) we might establish its legal entity, save/invest for the future, and participate fully in our host communities, the Plumia mission is something we knew we had to be involved with.
While the possibilities of Plumia are super exciting, we can't forget the realities of nomadism. Loneliness is a real issue, and global mobility is not always pretty for host communities (more on that next time).
We're currently in negotiations to offer our creative services and help SafetyWing achieve their Plumia mission. We’re committed to combining our business savvy with our artistic skills to build solutions that can help nomads cure their loneliness and better integrate into local communities in a harmonious way. We have set up a new Instagram page. Watch this space!
If you’re a location-independent professional, you can have your say about the challenges and opportunities in our remote work connections survey, and you’ll play a crucial role in shaping the future of location-independent living.
In the meantime, we are now actively recommending SafetyWing to nomads and location-independent professionals we meet on the road. If you know anyone who might be interested, share this newsletter with them.
Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you in the next edition.
– Harrison & Corina
Help us empower more nomads and local communities! Share this newsletter with your friends and colleagues who are living the location-independent life.
Wanna go deeper on the facts and fixes for nomad loneliness? Check out our preceding post here →
Love the idea of connecting remote workers with local communities. It's something I'm working on as well through organizing events that bridge the gap between nomads and host communities. This will be our first event in Slovenia this summer through which we'll try to solve these issues - https://bit.ly/LLLkarst