Citizens of the World? Digital Nomads, Mobility and Cosmopolitanism

Times are changing. The driving force of change in the world is technological advance … The change is invisible, unstoppable and accelerating. It is pushing in two directions: towards smaller, cheaper, more portable tools, and towards the imminence of cheap, high capacity, global communication networks … In time these tools will become cheap enough for everyone, and the biggest lifestyle change for 10,000 years – since humans stopped being nomadic and settled down to farm – will be delivered to most people in the developed world. People will therefore be able to ask themselves, ‘Am I a nomad or a settler?’ For the first time in 10,000 years that choice will become a mainstream lifestyle option.

Tsugio Makimoto and David Manners, Author’s Note, Digital Nomad

The quote above captures the essence of digital nomadism. In it, the authors of the book who coined the term and prophesised the movement envision a future where developments in communication technology will advance an alternative paradigm of human existence, one that isn’t based on where you were born, but where – and with whom – you choose to live. Motivated by the natural human urge to travel and explore, and made possible by technological developments in mobility and mobile computing, it’s a vision that sees the gradual untethering of the individual from his or her natal territory, and paints a picture, I would argue, of a world that resonates with the project of cosmopolitanism.

I aim to accomplish four principal goals in this article. The first is to situate digital nomadism within sociological cosmopolitanism. The second is to demonstrate that digital nomads are actors in the cosmopolitanisation of the world. The third is to challenge the claim that digital nomads are no more than contemporary expressions of neoliberal globalisation. Finally, the fourth goal is to demonstrate the resonance between Stoic cosmopolitanism and digital nomadism as a cosmopolitan practice of mobility. At core, my thesis is that digital nomadism, through the process of cosmopolitanisation, helps realise some of the ideals of the cosmopolitan imaginary. I conclude the essay by posing some questions that I hope to answer in my own research.

Digital nomads leverage the power of information and communications technology (ICT) to fulfil their work obligations remotely whilst travelling the world (Müller, 2016). Prophesised by Makimoto and Manners (1997) over 20 years ago in their visionary manifesto, Digital Nomad, digital nomadism was envisioned as a location-independent lifestyle movement that would have broad social and political implications. By following the development and trajectory of communication technology (e.g., smaller and more powerful computers, the proliferation of the internet, cloud-based software, etc), the authors foresaw a future where work could be done remotely through the use of portable computers and wireless internet. The result: a growing community of digital nomads who would live transnational, unconventional and hypermobile lifestyles of perpetual travel (McElroy, 2019; Reichenberger, 2018; Schlagwein, 2018).

Mobilised by vast mobility networks and no longer tied to traditional, location-dependent working environments (such as offices), the emergence of this new social figure – who could work and live from anywhere and everywhere – would do more than just disrupt and disengage (traditional) sedentarised and static work practices and foster greater spatial and personal freedom. Indeed, beyond untethering the worker from the workplace, Makimoto and Manners (1997) argued that in a world where “national boundaries have less and less relevance” and “people’s ties to a geographic region weaken” (p. 23), globally-minded individuals, armed with technology and embedded in vast, global mobility matrixes, would no longer identify with their country of origin. Instead, they’d pledge their “primary social allegiance” to "tribes" based on shared interests. In other words, nationalism, the nation-state and an identity based on your country of origin would gradually be swept into the dustbin of the 20th century.

In arguing against the (future) relevance of the nation-state, Digital Nomad appears to implicitly reject methodological nationalism (Wimmer & Schiller, 2003), which is the analytical framework that positions the nation-state, as bounded and static containers of sociality, as the basic unit of analysis in social science. Why should the nation-state, it is argued, with its invisible borders and “imagined communities” (Anderson, 2006) be the “natural” unit of analysis in the social sciences and confine our conception of what society is, could be or should be? Existing outside the discursive spaces of academia with its associated vocabulary (Makimoto was a computer scientist, Manners a journalist), the authors can be forgiven for failing to invoke this conceptual critique (at least, by name) in their prophetical visions.

Nonetheless, Makimoto and Manners unknowingly echo a critique central to both mobilities theorists such as John Urry (2010) and cosmopolitan sociologists like Ulrich Beck (2008). In critical chorus, both Urry and Beck reject methodological nationalism as a useful analytical optic in understanding the contemporary world (Sheller, 2011). What we need, according to these scholars, is some new theoretical architecture for analysing society in a way that moves beyond national categories. For Beck (2008, p. 26), what we need is “a paradigmatic shift” away from the “dominant national gaze” to a “cosmopolitan perspective” to account for the overlapping webs of connections between (transnational) social actors that extend above and beyond national borders that characterise the present state of modernity.

Urry and other mobilities scholars would agree with this assessment (Sheller & Urry, 2006). Mobility has become essential to modern life and a “national” social science is no longer up to the task of codifying it. The “mobilities paradigm” recognises the incessant flow of “objects, information, images and capital” (Sheller, 2011, p. 356) as well as the mobility of people and social relations as the ontological ground of the modern world. Indeed, what both mobilities and cosmopolitan sociologists have in common is a rejection of a sedentarised image of the world, one rooted in bounded territories with separate and impermeable social realities (Sheller, 2011). Furthermore, transnational migration, diasporic communities and growing inter-cultural global consciousness have called not just the nation-state into question, but also our ideas about identity, community and belonging.

At this point, it’s useful to make a distinction between philosophical or normative cosmopolitanism and sociological or descriptive cosmopolitanism. Philosophical cosmopolitanism entails “the basic idea of human unity and a harmonious form of universal governance” (Papastergiadis, 2012, p. 81). Although it was Socrates who first declared himself a “citizen of the world” and the Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope who first politicised the cosmopolitan motif by professing no special ties to any particular city or state (Kleingeld, 2011, p. 2), it was the Stoics of ancient Athens who were the first to develop a philosophy of cosmopolitanism centred on the moral imperative to extend care, obligation and rights to all of humanity, regardless of their territorial specificity. In the 18th century, Immanuel Kant (1970) reintroduced the philosophical project to Enlightenment Europe. Kant argued for a federation of nation-states in his vision of cosmopolitanism as a hedge against global war and conflict[1]. This political framework would also ensure basic human rights and freedom for all.

Sociological cosmopolitanism, on the other hand, bears no moral or political aspirations. Instead, it is grounded in a descriptive account of the everyday expressions and processes of cosmopolitanism that shape social reality – in other words, not so much what ought to be (in some utopic future?), but what actually is. As my research project on digital nomadism falls squarely in the realm of social science, I am more concerned with this second understanding of cosmopolitanism, i.e., as a descriptive analysis of the world.

However, it is difficult to separate the prescriptive from the descriptive – the ideal from the real – as the two are intricately linked. Like Papastergiadis, I do not think that cosmopolitanism “is either top-down or bottom-up” but rather “that the two positions are dependent on each other” (2012, p. 89). For example, the cosmopolitanisation of the world necessarily brings diverse and disparate people together which encourages mutual open exchange and curiosity about the other – a key aspect of Stoic cosmopolitanism. Although scholars have tried to clearly distinguish the practice of cosmopolitanism from its more imaginary or moral articulation, what we are left with is an uncertain and unstable dialectic between aspiration and application which results in a partial and fragmented cosmopolitanism (Amit & Gardiner Barber, 2015, p. 545). Be that as it may. Except in certain sections of this essay, my focus will be primarily on cosmopolitanism as understood through a sociological lens.

Furthermore, I locate my research within the mobilities paradigm and recognise the utility in adopting an analytical lens that steers away from methodological nationalism. Thinking in national categories simply doesn’t lend itself well to studying transnational communities (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002), such as digital nomads. Adopting a cosmopolitan perspective, however, bears analytical fruit. To frame my research and pivot away from a national to a cosmopolitan gaze, Beck’s “methodological cosmopolitanism” is useful. This post-national “grammar of the social and political” (Beck, 2008, p. 29) opens up an analytical arena that accounts for the multidimensional interplay of different cultural artefacts, ideas and influences, as well as the proliferation of transnational forms of life that characterise our contemporary world. Beck calls this process “cosmopolitanisation” or the “cosmopolitanisation of reality” (2008, p. 26). I contend that digital nomads play an increasingly instrumental role in this cosmopolitanisation of reality.

It’s important here to note a crucial distinction between philosophical cosmopolitanism and (sociological) cosmopolitanisation. Whilst the former is a voluntary project entered into after political and/or moral consideration, the latter process is often unintended and involuntary (Beck, 2008, p. 27) – a side of effect of the global mobility flows of people, objects, ideas and capital in modernity. This is exactly the case made by Makimoto and Manners (1997) in Digital Nomad. Developments in communication technology, it was argued, would have the unintended consequences of mobilising tech-savvy travellers to all corners of the world where they’d live side-by-side with locals and other nomads in interest-based communities. Although digital nomads do not, as yet, profess their primary social alliance to a “tribe,” their communities are characterised by a spirit of cosmopolitanism, and in this regard, digital nomads and the formation of digital nomad communities and hubs around the world play a key part in the cosmopolitanisation of the cities, towns and places that absorb them. Let me explain.

From Bali to Chiang Mai, Lisbon to Medellin, digital nomads congregate, co-work and live in cosmopolitan communities characterised by an international spread of nationalities (Green, 2020; Haking, 2018; Thompson, 2019). In response, vast ecosystems of co-working spaces, cafes and other services pop up to cater to these itinerant workers, necessitating confrontation, communication, interaction and co-existence between not only a diverse group of digital nomads but also between these globally-minded individuals and the local communities in which they inhabit – albeit temporarily. This cultural and ethnic mixing mediated by an openness to difference, I would argue, is a feedback loop that facilitates the cosmopolitanisation of the world. But not in some abstract sense. According to Beck, “being cosmopolitan” is qualitatively different to “being national” in a couple of ways. First, it’s an embodied experience of interacting with different cultural expressions, rather than some imagined sense of belonging to a national community. Second, it provokes different kinds of questions, such as “Who am I?” or “What am I?” instead of “Who are we” or “What are we?” (2008, p. 31). In my view, these experiences help to dislodge one’s personal identity from the collective categories of “us” and “we” and simultaneously calls into question the othering of the other as “they” and “them.”

But is cosmopolitanisation just a front for the exploitive processes of global capitalism that deepens the divisions between the haves and the have nots? David Harvey (2009) believes so. According to Harvey, the distinction between Beck’s cosmopolitanisation and neoliberalism is “arbitrary” and “blurred” (p. 82) and masks the unrelenting spread of neoliberal globalisation. If cosmopolitanisation is just a mask for globalisation, and if digital nomadism is instrumental in the cosmopolitanisation of reality, then are digital nomads just another actor in the exploitative nature of capitalism? For Mancinelli (2020), the answer is in the affirmative. In her account, digital nomads are not so much counterculture captains of a new socio-technical phenomenon, nor “mobility pioneers” (Kesselring & Vogl, 2004), but opportunistic adaptors to the neoliberal logic of contemporary capitalism, relying on their entrepreneurial skills and creativity to “face the challenge of maintaining financial security while working remotely” (Mancinelli, 2020, p. 428) and taking advantage of the (low-cost) economic context of their adopted communities, as well as their favourable (low-tax) schemes.

However, whilst it is true that digital nomads occupy privileged positions within the neoliberal system (most nomads come from the Global North and hence carry “strong passports” along with their laptops) and have far greater access to mobility (as capital; i.e., “motility”) than most people on the planet, this assessment is too parochial. It fails, in my view, to take into account the cultural impact of digital nomadism and treats it merely as an expression of globalisation.

But globalisation and cosmopolitanisation aren’t the same thing. Whilst globalisation is primarily descriptive of the world market and the growth of neoliberal capitalism, cosmopolitanisation is a much more multidimensional process that involves the mobility of transnational forms of life as well as the intercultural exchange of goods, ideas and influences (Beck, 2008, p. 28). I would argue that it is within this cosmopolitan context that an attitude of openness and curiosity between diverse and disparate groups of people can develop. Hence, digital nomads and their cosmopolitan communities do more than just perpetuate the exploitative neoliberal system (if they do at all): they also play a key role in facilitating the type of human-to-human connections and concerns that the Stoics held as core to their philosophy of cosmopolitanism.

To conclude, there are some questions that remain unanswered in digital nomad discourse. For example, whilst the claim of being a “world citizen” is a popular trope in digital nomad communities, there has not, as yet, been any research which investigates the meaning this term holds within the community. I’m interested in whether there is a moral component in their identification, and not merely a Diogenic expression of world citizenry, i.e., of declaring no loyalty to a particular city or state. Like Papastergiadis (2012), I’m also interested in the imaginative aspects of cosmopolitanism. Specifically, do digital nomads draw their cosmopolitan identity from an imagined cosmic community instead of an imagined national community? I hope to tackle these questions in my own research.

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[1] In Kantian cosmopolitanism, the nation-state was not so much an obstacle to the cosmopolitan ideal (as some “world government” proponents would argue) but the conduit through which the project could be realistically realised. In the pursuit of “perpetual peace” (Kant, 1970), the universal cosmopolitan project was the figure against the ground of nation-states, each of whom would, through their own self-interest and growing interdependence (e.g., through international trade and commerce), soon realise the reasonableness of a cosmopolitan federation. See Jürgen Habermas (1998) for a contemporary attempt to modernise Kant's theory of cosmopolitanism.