In pursuit of home: Digital nomadism and a road that never ends

The dimension of space no longer acts as a limit to sociality as it once did. Before the advent of the train, the car and the plane, social interaction was limited to walking distance. Then came communication technology. Today, thanks to the internet and social media, social relations are global.

However, time – that other dimension of reality, pernicious and persistent in its pursuit in greying our hair and clocking along even when we stand still – appears to limit the quality of this sociality. If, as several scholars have argued, home is built on a foundation of social relationships and a network we embed ourselves in, then a feeling of home amongst a highly mobile population such as digital nomads can only really emerge in place, over time. Hence, the blossoming of fruitful social relations, i.e., the type needed for a sense of home to emerge, needs time to mature and grow, indicating that a feeling of home cannot be found on the road per se, but in the pit stops along the way.

Indeed, it’s near-impossible to cultivate a garden in the hard bitumen of the highway, just as it’s near-impossible to tend to a social garden in the transient interactions of the itinerant lifestyle. This is, I think, why many digital nomads place such an emphasis on community in their travel plans. In addition to the several non-negotiables on the nomad checklist – such as affordability, strong Wi-Fi, and co-working spaces and cafes to work from – most nomads also want to move somewhere with an open, welcoming and vibrant community. As they say, no man is an island, and no nomad, I’d say, despite his or her best efforts, can remain for too long in the interstitial seas of nomading without eventually coming ashore, to dock – at least for a while.

In other words, notwithstanding its economic and lifestyle benefits, such as a lower cost of living and a beach just down the road, the pursuit of residential mobility often comes at the cost of social connection. Whilst physical distance is no longer the obstacle it once was thanks to modern forms of transportation, relational distances, e.g., that between mere stranger and close friend, cannot be so easily overcome.

Whilst the space-time compression of the contemporary world allows many of us to communicate, commute and collaborate across and through vast distances faster and further than ever before, the temporal investment needed in the formation of significant social relationships (necessary conditions for a feeling of being-at-home) appears to act as a bulwark against the nomadic urge to wander and roam indefinitely. As social creatures, the gravitational pull of home, it seems, can only be kept at bay and never truly outrun.