Mission-Based Nomadism
Hey friends 👋
If you want to be a real nomad, then you need to speak the local language, you need to do work that contributes directly to your host community, and you need to give up your foreign salary and privileges, because the way that nomads are currently living around the world is “just not fair.” This was how Demetrio Hernández, a Oaxaca-based entrepreneur we stayed with recently, responded when we asked him for his thoughts on digital nomadism and the future of work.
“I think you have to make a second important step as a nomad. Forget the digital advantages that your overseas companies and currencies give you. If you really want to move because you love the weather here in Oaxaca or the food in Argentina or the traditions there in Iraq, then move yourself and change your benefits. Not because you have pounds and it’s very easy for you to have a big house and great food. I do understand it’s because of the system, the capitalism system. But I think it’s going to fall apart. Maybe I am wrong. But if you want to be a very real nomad, then be a real nomad. Work in the land where you are moving. Earn in the currency you are living with. Pay for the community you are living in.”
Demetrio’s sentiments shine a light on the uncomfortable questions about who wins and who loses in today’s globalised world. From his point of view, this inequity is being brought into sharper focus by the increasing number of digital nomads arriving in Oaxaca and Mexico City (CDMX), and he’s worried that the privilege of being able to work remotely, or not, could become the next great inequality.
Demetrio’s not alone. Locals in nomad hotspots like CDMX, Lisbon and Bali, among others, are pushing back against the disintegrative effects of what they see as a new form of colonialism. There is concern that nomads congregating in a few cool neighbourhoods drive up the cost of living and displace local people who can no longer afford to live there.
The Dark Side of Digital Nomadism
The writer
(who was once a travel Youtuber and nomad but has been a CDMX resident for the past three years) writes saliently in his newsletter, , about the darker side of digital nomadism and how it is impacting his adoptive home. Nomads’ expectation that conversation be conducted in English and that local food be tweaked to satisfy the nomad palate is fuelling local peoples’ resentment and hurting nomadism’s image. Photos are being shared online showing local people living in the street having been forced out of their homes, and anti-nomad graffiti telling nomads they are “fucking disgusting” and that they should “leave.”The fact is that not all passports are created equal. It is comparatively difficult for Mexicans to relocate to the US, for example, while nomads from the US and other advanced economies can move more easily and are living in countries like Mexico and Thailand by doing border runs, or by taking advantage of relatively relaxed visa rules.
Without proper residency, nomads can’t have proper rental contracts, and this means they end up living in Airbnbs and other short-term rentals – typically within hotspot neighbourhoods – concentrating wealth in the hands of the same few landlords and top-rated restaurant owners, further exacerbating local tensions and undermining the sustainability of the nomad movement.
A Nuanced Approach to Nomadism
At the same time, others point out that nomads are simply the new scapegoats for a gentrification problem that governments need to sort out by building more houses, that gentrification is a problem tourists and expats have more of a hand in, and that many nomads are themselves fleeing their hometowns as victims of gentrification.
For example, 20% of Americans moved cities after the pandemic, or know someone who did, seeking more space with lower costs and nicer climates. One of the cities hit hardest by the exodus was San Francisco, which is often regarded as the priciest city in the world. In 2020, nearly 40% more people left SF compared to the previous year.
The cost of living in expensive cities is forcing many people to weigh up their options and choose a life on the road where they can leverage their digital skills – particularly younger people for whom education and property ownership are no longer compelling narratives because they’re prohibitively expensive. Me and Corina can’t claim that this was the reason we left London (we just wanted to see the world, and we are relatively privileged enough to have made it happen), but we will say that London’s cost of living is definitely something that would deter us from returning!
Still others are asking what’s so bad about gentrification at all. Providing we find ways to protect local people from being priced out, so the argument goes, doesn’t gentrification actually reduce crime and increase the quality of life in cities, towns and neighbourhoods overall?
These complex issues are going to affect more and more people as nomadism continues to rise. In the US, the number of folk describing themselves as digital nomads increased dramatically from 7 million to 17 million between 2019 and 2022. 72 million Americans (21% of the population) say they are considering becoming nomadic within the next 2-3 years. And it is predicted that the total number of nomads in the world could reach one billion by 2035. Faced with this data, the question is: how might nomads and local people become more integrated?
Naturally, me and Corina are asking ourselves where we fit in all of this. Are we part of the solution or part of the problem? How should we decide where to live? How long should we stay in each place? How should we spend our time there? To try to answer these questions, we’ve been thinking a lot about what our goals are during our time on the road, and how we expect our goals to change over time.
“Nomad” is a baggy term that needs to be unpacked and given more nuance. If, for example, we’re brand new to nomadism, starry-eyed and prioritising a diversity of experiences, then we’re probably not going to want to stay in one place for too long. If, on the other hand, we’ve been around the block and we’re prioritising connections and established routines, then rootedness will be more appealing.
Our tenure as nomads predisposes us to engage with the challenges and opportunities discussed here in our own unique and timely ways, and the clearer we can be about where we are and what we want, the more useful we can be and the more sustainably we can travel. We’re attempting to map these nomad “transitions” using our own experiences and that of other nomads, too. If you’d like to contribute by sharing your own experiences, we’ve created a short survey (10 mins). You’re also more than welcome to email us if you prefer.
Local people and authorities in our host communities can also benefit from a more nuanced breakdown of nomad needs. Rather than grouping us all under one tyrannical label, they can start to understand how to develop infrastructure to support the nomad movement – and what contributions to ask of nomads – at different stages of evolution.
Governments have a key role to play in understanding the intricacies of nomadism and designing policies to support it, and it’s exciting to see companies like SafetyWing blazing trails with their wild Plumia mission. But whatever solutions we end up designing together, they must come not just from the top, but from the bottom as well. That’s what me and Corina are most interested in. We’re entrepreneurially-minded artists who like to work on the ground and get our hands dirty, and we’re developing strategies and tools that we hope can help nomads and locals thrive.
Connecting Around a Mission
These strategies came out of our own experiences. Just eight weeks into our new nomad lifestyle, we experienced the problem of disintegration ourselves in the form of isolation and loneliness – even though we had each other! Because we weren’t engaging with local people, it felt like lockdown with better scenery.
When Harrison lost his job suddenly, we were forced to get leverage on ourselves and find other work. We turned to travel writing because we saw it as a way to integrate (there’s that word again) our skills and interests with our nomadic lifestyle.
In the process of interviewing local people and writing about their businesses, we ended up getting two giggles from one tickle: we cured our loneliness, and we built relationships with locals by collaborating with them.
Writing about local businesses gave us a glimpse of how much more meaningful our travel experiences and relationships on the road could be if we took this mission-led approach more seriously and used it to actually define our nomad life.
By structuring our travels around a “project” or a “mission,” we find that it encourages collaboration, helps all parties see the connections between disciplines and concepts, and perhaps most importantly, creates a more immersive and enriching experience. Could this offer a clue to how nomads and host communities can get closer together?
Demetrio said the most successful examples of nomad integration he’s seen involved “painters and cooks and mezcal makers” connecting with locals through the lens of shared interests. Whether it’s making art together, cooking pastries, distilling mezcal, or co-authoring unique guidebooks, “mission-based” nomadism could be a way to structure our time and energy in a naturally collaborative way that traverses boundaries and helps us truly connect.
Thanks and see you next time.
– Harrison & Corina
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Nomads have money that they're willing to spend in local communities, which could make them richer and equalise some of the inequalities of birth that we find in touch vs poor countries
I think the trick is for it to be reinvested instead of captured by landlords and property owners.
A land value tax / citizens dividend setup makes a lot of sense for places affected by nomads: nomads drive up rents, but they're mostly captured by the state. The state then gives every local a dividend from this pot of captured rents.
So even if locals are paying a lot more rent, they've got a large citizens dividend -- so on net they're likely to get more from the dividend than they pay in rent.
I appreciated this article, then unfortunatley saw it end with a GenAI image.
Because I have no idea how many creators went unpaid and uncredited to scrape and build the LLM from which that graphic was generated, I do not think sharing the content it illustrates would be ethical.