URBAN PROSPECTING: THE NEW TRAJECTORIES OF LABOR AND THE MAKING OF THE DIGITAL NOMAD
A Dissertation Presented
By
Jeff Sternberg
to The Department of Sociology & Anthropology
In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
In field of
Sociology
Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts April 2021
1 URBAN PROSPECTING: THE NEW TRAJECTORIES OF LABOR AND THE MAKING OF THE DIGITAL NOMAD
A Dissertation Presented
By
Jeff Sternberg
ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the College of Social Science & Humanities of Northeastern University April 2021
2 Dissertation Abstract
This dissertation applies an urban political-economy framework to look at the growing mobile and
laboring population of digital nomads who are attempting to pursue their futures and access the city
amidst an increasingly global and uneven geographic distribution of jobs located in inaccessible cities, a
situation I refer to as the new urban crisis. I approach Digital Nomads as a new in-formation unit of production introduced by changes in the nature of work as well as by corresponding changes in the urban
social structures of social reproduction brought about by the transition to post-industrialism and the
flexible regime of capital accumulation. Digital Nomads are a heterogenous population, a field of class fragments brought together by their shared and plural experiences of the new urban crisis. It is in the way that these diverse actors respond to this crisis that they begin to form themselves as a coherent figure and
subject, or rather a number of classes-in-formation obscured under the moniker of the Digital Nomad.
Mobility is a key tool this population utilizes in response to this crisis, connecting to cities in new ways
through practices such as co-living and remote work. Digital Nomads approach these practices from
different positions, coming across one another in shared spaces in the cities they invest their mobility in
while learning from one another the different ends these practices can be put to. These collisions shape
and direct their future mobility and its underlying logics, acting as the sites where digital nomads and their successors are being made. As the outcomes of this mobility will impact cities and systems of global
production for decades to come, it is vital to understand the processes by which this mobility is directed,
to understand how the lifeworld of labor and the digital nomad makes mobility to certain places over
others possible, posing the question: When you can live anywhere, where do you choose to live? This
dissertation sets out to unpack the subjective processes by which digital nomads invest their mobility, a
practice I will refer to as Urban Prospecting. Urban Prospecting is both the objective collection of these movements and the open-ended sets of subjective logics guiding these pursuits. Urban Prospecting logics
are used to evaluate places as potential sites for future investments of mobility, these evaluations
weighing how each place makes certain life outcomes related to the self and employment possible.
3
In order to get at both the logics and outcomes of urban prospecting, I utilized a mixed methods approach
which included network analysis and multi-sited ethnography to unpack how digital nomads interpret
their position within the global urban landscape and how these interpretations guide where they invested
their mobility. Building a social network model of digital nomad mobility logged on the social
networking platform Nomadlist between more than 700 cities around the globe, my research demonstrated that digital nomads engage in two broad circuits of mobility: (1) mobility to the global city,
and (2) mobility away from the global city to new offbeat and off-the-map locations. I then conducted
multi-sited ethnography at the PodShare co-living space in the Global City of Los Angeles and the
Ghoomakad co-living space in the Offbeat city of Dharamsala, India in order to look at the types of digital
nomads and urban prospecting logics underlying each circuit of mobility. In each city, I elaborated a
place-based typology of the type of digital nomads I met based on how they balanced the terms of urban
prospecting that guided them to each location. In the former case, I looked at how and why this population is still attaching itself to global cities in crisis and their attendant labor and social reproductive markets. In the latter case, I investigated the emergence of new work destinations that have been enabled
by the introduction of remote work that allows digital nomads to decouple from global cities and head to
offbeat locales and remote getaways in Southeast Asia and the Global South that offer tourist
infrastructures, nice weather and low costs of living. I end by considering the implications this labor
mobility poses for the future of work, urbanization and capital accumulation in general.
4 Acknowledgements
This project wouldn’t have been possible without the guidance, advise and support of many different individuals who I cannot all name here.
I would first like to thank my committee: Liza Weinstein, Laura Nelson, Nina Sylvanus and Tim
Cresswell. Liza, you have been my rock since coming to Northeastern and taught the first and best class I attended here. You nurtured me both as a student and budding scholar, guiding this project from the shred of an idea it was to the finished project before us. I could not thank you enough for allowing me to write the dissertation I wanted to, seeing what I wanted to do, and helping me get there, all while remaining congeal, compassionate but most importantly constructively critical. Laura, your arrival at Northeastern shifted my trajectory through the program and beyond, immersing me in the world of computational social science and rigorous theory guided empirical research. You taught me to how to operationalize concepts through methods and research, and how to put projects together and keep them going. You encouraged me to push myself to tackle new methods and uncharted territory while also qualifying my arguments and findings by highlighting and discussing their limitations, to be ambitious but humble, and to take what I receive and pay it forward. Nina and Tim, your comments on the dissertation challenged me and pushed in ways I was not ready form that forced me to confront and deal with different short-comings or blind-spots in my argument while also pushing me to justify and qualify my arguments harder, ultimately making the dissertation stronger. Our back and forth throughout the proposal and defense processes were enlivening and invigorating and I thank you for trudging through a long and in need of many edits dissertation with care and deep engagement.
5 I would like to thank my dissertation writing group or, as I like to think of them, my shadow committee: Taylor Braswell, Ezgi Deniz Rasit, Sam Maron, Vivek Mishra, Camille Peterson and
Mike Shields. You all read draft after draft of each chapter of the dissertation and labored through the 80-page rough drafts I would send. Your comments made each draft better and actively made me a better writer. I literally could not have done it without you.
I would also like to thank a few people who served as early influencers on this project:
Len Albright, Jeff Juris, Ben Schmidt, Cameron Blevins and Val Moghadem. You all saw this project in bits and pieces at various stages, helping me shape and build the nuggets that would become the full project. Len, without you I would never have been able to ask a convincing research question; I would have been stuck looking at gaps in the literature instead of looking for an interesting story. Jeff, I wish I got to know you better, but your reading and engagement with the LA chapter of this project and our conversations about Italian Workerism and Marxist
Autonomia breathed life into me and made me believe that I could make this dissertation about large broad questions concerning the future of labor and capital. Ben and Cameron, without both of you I would not have either been exposed to the digital humanities nor constructed the network model that acts a one of the largest components of this project. I have been enriched by your expertise and the new disciplinary boundaries you exposed me to.
I would like to thank my Cohort & Fellow Sociology Grad Students with a special shout out to
Baran Karsak and Alex Alden, my rocks from early on. There are too many of you to thank individually but I would not have made it throughout the program without your support, advice,
6 enthusiasm and expertise. Your input and support was often just as valuable if not more so than that of the faculty.
I would like to thank my Union Folks: Tim LaRock, Ashley Houston, Andrew Summerfield, Ben
Pitta and all my other fellow grad student union organizers with the UAW who enriched my lst 3 years of my graduate student program, showing me that together as workers we could contest, challenge, and actively make the university a better place. Without you all, I honestly don’t know if I would have finished the PhD and I certainly would not be moving in the direction I am today without engaging in struggle with the rest of you.
Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank my family, both my wife and Son
Tash & Misha, our cat Sigmund, and my mom, dad, brother and sister. Tash, you let me leave you multiple summers in row for months on end to go do crazy things, interview digital nomads, and itch my yearning for co-living. The time I had to spent away from you was terrible and I owe you many things, but I cannot believe I have such an amazing partner who not only allowed me to take time away from her but actively encouraged me to pursue my interests and dreams (as well as have to listen to me blabber on about digital nomads and Marxism incessantly for 6 years). Misha, you’re so young but you spent the first 7 months of your life having your Daddy’s love and attention split between you and his first baby (this dissertation). I hope that this is the last time my attention is not all your own. Mom, I do not think this project would have been conceivable without my experiences growing up watching you be an Early 2000s Remote
Worker writing about the City of Detroit for about.com. This job allowed you to be home with
7 me and my siblings throughout our childhood and exposed me to cities as a greater subject. I did not even realize how much this probably influenced this project until it was almost wrapped up.
8 Table of Contents
Dissertation Abstract ...... 3
Acknowledgements ...... 5
Introduction ...... 14
The Changing Role of Place ...... 17
Mobility and its Interaction with Place, Employment and Self ...... 20
The Mobile Subjectivities of Labor ...... 23
The Making of the Digital Nomad...... 25
Co-Living Spaces ...... 40
The Project of Urban Prospecting ...... 42
A Note on Method ...... 44
The Schema of Presentation ...... 51
Chapter 1 ...... 58
Introduction ...... 59
Section 1: The New Urban Crisis and its Corresponding Question ...... 63
A Note on Class and its Relation to the Project at Hand ...... 67
Section 2: Regimes of Accumulation and the Urban Social Structure ...... 73
Section 3: The Regime of Flexible Accumulation...... 79
The Urban Scale of Flexible Accumulation ...... 82
Section 4: The Changing Nature of Production ...... 90
Changes in Production during The Past 25 Years ...... 91
9 From the Firm, to the Metropolis, to the Multitude ...... 96
The Emergence of the Digital Nomad ...... 99
Chapter 2 ...... 105
Introduction ...... 105
The Global City as a Site of Production and Consumption ...... 108
Digital Nomad Mobility as an Emerging Global City Function ...... 112
Methods and Description of the Dataset...... 116
Nomad List – The Basis for the Geographic Urban Network Model ...... 117
Background on Nomad List – Data Potentials and Limitations ...... 119
Findings and Illustration of Theory ...... 129
Description of the Digital Nomad Urban Network ...... 130
Emerging Digital Nomad Cities and their Networks ...... 132
Exiting and Landing Sites - Which Cities are Most Strongly Connected? ...... 139
New Nomadic Urban Regionalisms ...... 145
Reconfiguring International Relations of Production ...... 157
The Restructuring of the Agglomeration Economy ...... 164
Chapter 3 ...... 170
Towards an Expanding and Fluid Typology ...... 173
From the Objective to the Subjective ...... 176
The Contours of an Emerging Subjectivity: Connections to Place, Employment, and Conceptions of
Self ...... 178
Axes of Variation...... 181
Subjects in Pursuit of the Digital Nomad City...... 186
10 Towards a Typology: The Fragments of the New Mosaic ...... 194
The Spectrum of Digital Nomadhood: Population Origins and Typology Anchors ...... 197
Chapter 4 ...... 211
Introduction ...... 212
The PodShare and its Surrounding Socio-Spatial Formation ...... 215
The Surrounding Socio-Spatial Formation...... 216
The Founding of The PodShare ...... 229
The Los Angeles Typology: The Mobile Residents of the PodShare ...... 237
Social Travelers ...... 239
Temporary Workers...... 243
Transtioners ...... 247
Staff Members ...... 249
The Practice(s) of Co-Living...... 252
Place-Resumes as Cultural Product ...... 253
Social Distinction and Authenticity: Between and Within Cities ...... 256
Representing and Making Meaning of Mobility ...... 259
Social Travelers ...... 261
Temporary Workers...... 263
Transitioners ...... 265
Grinning or Groaning? Or both?...... 267
To Los Angeles and Beyond ...... 269
Chapter 5 ...... 275
Introduction ...... 275
11 Ghoomakad and its Surrounding Socio-Spatial Context ...... 278
The Surrounding Socio-Spatial Formation...... 280
The Founding of Ghoomakad ...... 289
The Dharamsala Typology: The Digital Nomads of Ghoomakad ...... 294
Global Nomads, Backpackers and their Discontents...... 295
Transitioners and Bootcampers ...... 311
From the Firm to Remote Work: Remote Employees and Contractors ...... 322
From Remote Worker to Distributed Company and Beyond ...... 337
The Gradient of Digital Nomadhood ...... 358
Urban Prospecting in Off-Beat Geographies ...... 359
Conclusion ...... 364
The ‘Fixes’ of Urban Prospecting: Searching for Refuge from the Crisis ...... 365
The Fate of Place and Production Under the Regime of Flexible Accumulation ...... 371
Cities, Remote Work and Mobility in the Time of Corona Virus ...... 377
Methodological Appendix ...... 390
My Approach to Multi-Sited Ethnography ...... 391
An Ethnography of the PodShare Co-Living Network in Los Angeles, USA ...... 393
An Ethnography of the Ghoomakad Co-Living Space in Dharamsala, India...... 400
Computational Social Science ...... 404
Mapping the Trajectories of Digital Nomads ...... 405
References ...... 409
Notes ...... 417
12
The Mobility of Labor
13 Introduction
The Project of Urban Prospecting: Investigating the Subjectivity of the Digital Nomad and Spatial Fixes to the New Urban Crisis
Brandon, a white 22-year old recent college graduate from South Carolina landed down at the PodShare co-living space in Los Angeles, which would serve as his homebase for the next two weeks, as he embarked on a preparatory trip to the city in order to secure both a job and a place to live in anticipation of moving there for good. He spent his days printing out resumes and looking for jobs, mentioning that he was looking to caddy at one of the “rich golf courses, they give the fattest tips”. While looking to caddy, he was also interviewing at various service jobs in the area, looking for a waiting or bartending gig in West Hollywood. He said that he did not really care what type of work he was doing, he just wanted to live in Los Angeles. He qualified this statement, saying that he had many friends back home who graduated college with a business degree and who were now working jobs they hated but did not know what else to do.
He wanted to reject the offer of miserable desk work that was presented to him and make his life decisions based on what type of lifestyle he could get out of it. He would spend his nights meeting the other people in the PodShare, specifically clicking with other residents who were transitioning to the city, who would expose him to their various social networks that he hoped to make use of down the line. Brandon can be viewed as a nascent creative class (Florida 2002;
2003) type who rejects the career trajectory laid out before him, the horizontal and bullshit job hierarchies (Graeber 2018) that have become attached to this social position over the past few decades, in favor of neo-bohemian (Llyod 2002) forms of life and mobility. There is a rejection of the life possibilities associated with the schooling he received and where he grew up that
14 makes a gamble on downward social mobility palatable if it at least offers exciting and meaningful experiences.
On the other side of the world, Shubham, a young Indian man from Rajasthan who was working as a freelancer a few years out of college, was landing at the Ghoomakad co-living space in Dharamsala, India located in the foothills of the Himalayas to participate in a month- long coding and knowledge sharing retreat called One Month Campus. Shubham had been working as a freelancing software developer but was growing tired of the grind and had already lived in some of India’s biggest cities – like Pune, Bangalore and Chennai. He was feeling unfulfilled in the life furled out in front of him and was looking for something different in terms of both his career and where he was living. This drove him to want to pursue further education abroad and make a jump to circuits of global brain circulation in the form of a Masters’ program in Computer Engineering at SUNY Buffalo and the Western tech jobs it would open up to him.
Before embarking on this adventure, he decided to take this trip to the coding camp in
Dharamsala to escape the summer heat of Rajasthan and Pune while preparing to transition and embark abroad on his stint of global mobility to the US. His time at the coding bootcamp served him as both a networking vacation and a time of liminality between two parts of his life. The camp, as much as, if not more than, its location in Dharamsala, was exactly the type of retreat and experience Shubham was looking for, a liminal space to help him prepare for and ready himself for his geographic and career transition. Shubham walked away from One Month
Campus both with new skills as well as a host of new friends and colleagues, a social network dispersed across India and the rest of the world, with many also making jumps to global
15 mobility, creating a shifting reciprocal network that could be relied on in the future for support, friendship and learning.
In Brandon’s case, he was leaving the suburbs and the structured, confined creative class lives they offered him to engage in potential downward class mobility and precarious employment for the potential reward of living an interesting life made possible by the unique place of Los Angeles. In Shubham’s case, he was engaging in brain circulation to leave his hometown and the Indian cities of his youth to obtain better employment opportunities elsewhere. His trip to Dharamsala constituted a liminal stint of mobility that allowed him to transition between different parts of his life, reflect on his upcoming jump abroad, all while learning new skills and meeting similar others who would help guide his transition in place and employment moving forward. Both Brandon and Shubham were leaving where they were from in pursuit of better futures elsewhere, mobility used as a tool of transition allowing them to pivot to different life chances that they saw embedded within different locations. In the former case, mobility is used to attach to a place that fulfils the pursuit of a more meaningful self and attendant lifestyle, whereas in the latter case, place propels mobility toward employment and life chances in other places. Both Brandon and Shubham are engaging in practices of what I will be calling Urban Prospecting which can be best understood as the individual pursuit of a variety of possible futures across an uneven terrain of places through the act of mobility.
Urban Prospecting is both the objective collection of these movements and the open- ended sets of subjective logics guiding these pursuits. Urban Prospecting logics are used to evaluate places as potential sites for future investments of mobility, these evaluations weighing how each place makes certain life outcomes related to the self and employment possible. In the
16 past, employment bracketed what types of places, selves and futures could be pursued due to the monopoly that certain kinds of places held over economic opportunities and their attendant life outcomes. I will come to argue that, with the rise of the new urban crisis hitting cities around the globe, and corresponding changes in work and employment structures towards precaritization and labor flexibility, there has been a decline in the stability of the futures guaranteed by employment alone. This has put forward more frequent mobility as a tool to be used to keep these pursuits alive, pivoting in space when one investment of mobility fails to find another opportunity elsewhere. With the destabilization of employment, the life outcomes that particular places allow in the pursuit of actualizing different conceptions of the self take on an increased autonomy in directing urban prospecting calculations, allowing for a shift in the types of places that people pursue. This dissertation will be looking at how the new urban crisis and changes in production -- changes in place and in work -- have altered the subjective logics guiding the phenomenon of urban prospecting, leading to new bouts of labor mobility that pursues new types of places than they did in the past. This mobility, when taken in aggregate, makes new types of places capable of hosting laboring populations caught up in different ends of the capital accumulation process, presenting the potential to reproduce and alter it in different directions.
How is place being pursued differently than in the past and how is this tied up with changes in the subjectivities, interpretations and desires of contemporary mobile actors under capitalism? In order to get at this question, it is important to understand first how place has changed, and employment and the self with it.
The Changing Role of Place
Nestled in five distinct neighborhoods in Los Angeles lies the outposts of a growing urban network of co-living spaces known as the PodShare. These spaces are embedded within
17 several highly desirable but increasingly inaccessible neo-bohemian neighborhoods. They serve as a low-cost way for mobile populations to achieve tenancy in an increasingly expensive city.
They bring together a mosaic of internal domestic migrants, temporary workers, digital nomads, and international travelers. These residents have different reasons for living in these spaces, utilizing them differentially, but creating an emergent form of sociality around their shared condition: that of mobility. In their everyday interactions, each resident informs the others of spaces within the city, and within cities globally, to invest their mobility in, according to metrics of residency, employment, styles of social reproduction and cost of living. These spaces allow residents to evaluate Los Angeles, and cities globally, according to these metrics, producing discursive maps marking the locations that best satisfy their needs.
On the other side of the world, in the foothills of the Himalayas, east of McLeod Ganj,
India -- the home in exile of the Dalai Lama -- in a rural village of former Gaddi nomads sits a mud hut co-living complex known as Ghoomakad. This space hosts an ever-changing assemblage of residents: young internal Indian migrants coming from college and first-jobs in
Indian cities, older non-resident-Indians coming from whole careers spent abroad, and international tourists & backpackers. Within this space, there are residents writing blogs and working on digital marketing contracts for regional businesses, remote workers actively employed in the functioning of high-profile western firms, and CEO’s of small but growing distributed companies where all workers are remote. For some, their stay here constitutes a jumping-off point for extended global mobility, for others a periodic escape from city-living, and for others still a settling place after a long career of mobility. All of this is happening in the foothills of the Himalayas where the electricity goes out regularly and the only internet to be
18 trusted comes in the form of the personal cellular hotspots each resident maintains for themselves. Here, off the map, we see labor normally thought of as particularly urban & global occurring in a place that could have unknowingly been described as anything but.
These two socio-spatial forms are emerging on opposite sides of the globe but coalescing around similar populations. They reflect larger global trends in the changing nature of work, place and mobility in the digitized global economy, constituting reactions to the prevailing socio- spatial formations underlying the relationships between these three terms. The PodShare can be read as a reaction to the socio-spatial formation of the global city of Los Angeles, hoarding opportunity but becoming increasingly inaccessible due to rising rents and structural unemployment. The PodShare’s urban network emerges as a mechanism to allow people to connect to the city in new ways. Ghoomakad, on the other hand, can be read as a rejection of the social form of the global city, with its over-population and high cost of living, offering an outside to this social form that escapes the schema of production and reproduction demanded by the global city. It serves as an outside to this state of affairs, making it a site for potential mobility, both between jaunts within global cities, but also as a refuge away from, and possible alternative to, them.
Using these socio-spatial formations as case studies, this dissertation will seek to answer the following questions: How do the ways in which people interpret their place within the social- spatial formations associated with contemporary capitalism affect the actions they take in pursuing their lives? How do people react in response to these interpretations? What desires do they have as a result? How do they pursue these desires through mobility? How do these actions
19 and decisions taken aggregate and congeal into a dominant set of norms, discourses and subjectivities? What impacts do the mobilities taken by this population have on the existing social-spatial formations of global capitalism and what new ones do they create? What implications do these actions produce for the future machinations of capitalism? In this dissertation, I am primarily concerned with both the production of this population’s particular type of subjectivity formed by the socio-spatial formations that these mobile individuals find themselves in, but also in the emerging subjectivities and discourses that make mobility and flight to other socio-spatial formations an option. I investigate this from both the perspective of these mobile individuals – their shifting logics of urban prospecting -- and the changing geographies of employment and social reproduction they inherit and produce, charting the effects that their movements and connections between places have on the locations they flow to.
Mobility and its Interaction with Place, Employment and Self
How should these emerging socio-spatial formations be placed within the context of contemporary capitalism? These are the same questions that Saskia Sassen (2001, 2005, 2014,
2016) asked decades ago when analyzing the effects of economic globalization (Castells 1996,
2000, 2010; Crouch 2001; Esping-Anderson 1993; Harrison 1994) on the spatial organization of capitalist production. Sassen argued that a small number of cities were becoming key sites for the concentration of both capital and the command-and-control functions responsible for organizing the global economy. These changes in infrastructure, communications, and labor associated with economic globalization introduced a change in the nature of place, activating new kinds of places and putting them at the top of a growing global hierarchical network of cities. This phase of restructuring in the capitalist economy produced a new socio-spatial formation, that of the global
20 city (Abu-Lughod 1999; Sassen 2001), whose emergence reconfigured global networks of production and interactions between cities globally. Sassen cited the increased mobility of capital as the mechanism that kick-started this phase in global capitalism that led to the emergence of the global city and its very specific socio-historic spatial form. This mobility of capital generated and demanded changes in the nature of production, and thus the type of labor and infrastructure required to transform production in this manner, activating certain places as capable of fulfilling this role. These demands then reacted back on the internal structure of these global cities, producing changes in local places but also working to trigger changes in the urban networks these new production units managed.
Can these newly emerging socio-spatial formations be read as resulting from the same processes let loose by the capital mobility that produced the form of the global city, signaling its continued dominance extended over a larger swath of the globe? Or are they signals of a new phase in global capitalism? To answer these questions, it is necessary to look at the terms of these socio-spatial formations and connect them to the larger processes that create and change them. This requires the utilization of a plurality of approaches to study these socio-spatial formations including the sociological (Abu-Lughod 1991), the urban (Castells 1977), the economic (Sassen 2001), the accumulation (Aglietta 1978; Boyer 1990, Harvey 1992; Jessop
1997; Lipietz 1993; Negri 1996), and the labor (Hardt & Negri 2017; Negri 1996, 1999; Tronti
2019) perspectives, teasing out their relations to different socio-spatial formations. These emergent socio-spatial forms point to changes in, and a reconfiguration of the relationships between, the terms of the prevailing socio-spatial formation of the global city: production, labor, and place-based infrastructures. Innovations in digital technologies over the past 25 years are
21 also beginning to allow different connections between these terms to occur, namely the advent of remote work and the digitization of labor. Are the changes in the terms of the socio-spatial formation and the changing connections between them working to produce new and novel socio- spatial formations? And, if so, do they have the potential to reconfigure the hierarchy of the urban networks they are embedded in?
Mobility plays a unique role in these processes, contributing differentially to the production of various socio-spatial formations. It was the mobility and centrality of capital that led to the particular form of the global city and its position within the global-urban network.
Every other aspect of the socio-spatial formation is organized by these dominant centers of capital including labor. In these emerging socio-spatial formations, the promise of a different type of mobility playing a role in configuring the relationships within and between socio-spatial formations is emerging: the mobility of labor. This is occurring amidst the outbreak of the new urban crisis (Florida 2017a, 2017b) striking cities globally as they come to simultaneously hoard more and more economic opportunities and while becoming increasingly inaccessible. I will argue that the contradiction of the new urban crisis is the result of changes in the nature of work that have altered how place is being plugged into the capital accumulation process on a global scale. The move towards post-industrialism and finance driven capitalism has put an unrealizable demand on the space of the city to serve as both a source of use and exchange value in different circuits of accumulation, financial speculation driving up rents and real estate prices while threatening the continuation of production in these spaces, altering who is able to access the city and the types of selves that can be realized there.
22 What role does mobility, both of capital and labor, play in producing this crisis, as well producing fixes to it? I hypothesize that what is occurring is the beginning of a response on the side of labor to the world constructed by the mobility of capital and the socio-spatial forms trapping and consuming it. Labor responds to the situation created by the mobility of capital through its own mobility, seeking out spaces where it can best plug into the capitalist system while at the same time searching for an outside to it. To understand the shape this response is taking, one must understand the conditions that spur and make this mobility of labor an option, the methods and tools by which it is carried out, and the impact that it has on the places these mobile individuals flow to, the new urban networks and socio-spatial forms they create. To this end, attention must be paid to the ways that labor is incorporated into production that necessitates its mobility, but also to the ways that this labor is reproduced on the individual as well as the systemic level of capitalist accumulation. By looking at the collective urban space of consumption (Castells 1977) insight can be gained into how the reproductive practices of these mobile laborers impacts their mobility, forming the counterweight to the demands of production and potentially producing spaces of alterity and a new phase of urban political-economic reconfiguration.
The Mobile Subjectivities of Labor
In order to understand the terms comprising this response of labor to the world constructed by the mobility of capital, and to chart its emerging shape while measuring its potential impact on the production of space, it is necessary to approach this labor mobility in its objective and subjective forms. I approach the phenomenon of urban prospecting as the collection of historically particular forms of labor mobility let loose by the new urban crisis, its form being the totality of its objective movements across space, and its content being the
23 subjective determinizations guiding this movement carried forward by the populations driven to mobility by the crisis itself. In order to isolate these historically particular forms of labor mobility, I must begin to denote the populations that have been uniquely driven to mobility by the situation of the crisis and identify similarities in motivations for mobility as well as divergences in outcomes. To this end, I will begin with a negative definition of this population of interest, defining them as those experiencing and reacting to the situation of the new urban crisis through mobility, pulling in a variety of already existing populations into a new and anomic space in which new figures and hybrid subjects can emerge. I take Standing’s (2011) young urban nomad segment of the precariat as the base from which I build and investigate my population of interest, whose predecessors include Ong’s talented expatriates (2007), Florida’s creative class (2002, 2003), and Sassen’s high-skill knowledge workers and low-wage service workers (1994, 2001). Young urban nomads are youth who came of age in the era of precaritization, holding high levels of education but saddled with student debt, presented with a dearth of good jobs. They are confronted with low-paying, temporary, contracting jobs located within cities that are becoming harder to access. Their lack of firm tenancy within a revitalizing urban center makes them uniquely affected by the urban crisis, presenting mobility as a key tool to be used in their pursuit of life chances (Moretti 2013). Building on, and overlapping with this population, are the growing pool of remote workers unleashed by the digitization of labor and the emergence of the platform economy (Berg et al. 2018; Friederici & Graham 2018; Graham et al.
2017; Lehdonvirta et al. 2018; World Trade Organization 2018; Wood et al. 2018a, 2018b;
2018c). Through remote work, labor can theoretically be performed from a computer anywhere with an internet connection. The remote worker is location independent, a global and digital nomad (D’Andrea 2007; Hindman 2007; Makimoto & Manners 1997; Woldoff & Litchfield
24 2021), for the first time breaking with the organization of life and reproduction imposed upon them by the location of the firm, and thus of the demand to connect to global cities, giving them the ability to reject these crisis-ridden forms for new locations, spurring the growth of emergent socio-spatial formations.
The Making of the Digital Nomad
While the situation of the new urban crisis works well to designate the conditions that prompt the labor mobility characteristic of urban prospecting, it operates as a negative definition denoting and collecting a heterogenous population of mobile actors coming from dissimilar backgrounds brought together strictly by their experience of crisis and the importance of mobility in shaping their reactions to it. The forms of mobility that these disparate actors are coming to engage in used to be associated with particular and discernible already existing populations, employed and experienced in a relatively stable form according to particular cultural scripts and conceptions of the self that allowed for the reproduction of these distinct groups and classes. I argue that the new urban crisis, and the changes in place, employment and self that it entails, has taken these types of mobility that were anchored within particular classes and their corresponding spatiotemporal horizons and let them loose, making these practices and moments of mobility disconnected from any particular form of subject and its cultural framework for action. Understanding the backgrounds of these various groups helps to provide partial context for the ways they engage in and make use of mobility in the wake of the crisis; but, the very act of mobility itself takes these actors outside of these stabile originating subject positions and into new and unexplored spaces where they will be changed and shaped by the experiences of mobility they embark on. This is the nature of mobile populations in the age of
25 the new urban crisis, mobility itself throwing multiple populations and classes into flux and fragmentation as they attempt to connect to employment and opportunity structures around the globe, often changing group and class membership as they do so. I contend that this mobility makes these group boundaries blur, with the interaction and collision of these fragmented mobile actors in space giving birth to new subject-positions and populations that have not been seen before that demands investigation and positive definition.
While the populations that I have proposed to investigate have been brought towards mobility specifically by changes in place resulting from changes in production, these changes in place have occurred alongside of and been influenced by corresponding changes in other spheres of society including employment, the self, leisure, travel, technology, etc. A series of authors
(Makimoto & Manners 1997; McLuhan 1962; Toffler 1980; Schlagwein 2018) have been theorizing and predicting how changes across these fields could coalesce over the past 50 years, all imagining that these changes would allow for the triumph of mobility over space and the expansion of human freedom. They rooted the meaning and nature of this triumph in the distinction between nomadic and settled forms of life, lamenting the history of human society as birthed in nomadic and wandering peoples forced to become sedentary in order to overcome the problem of scarcity through agricultural and industrial settlement. The changes occurring across sectors of society promised to return humans to their “natural” state as nomads, overcoming the limits fixed settlement placed on human endeavors. Schlagwein (2018) describes how this triumph was envisioned in the 1960s by McLuhan (1962) who “pictured nomads zipping around at great speed, using facilities on the road to the point where they could almost dispense with their homes”; and in the 1980s by Toffler (1980) who predicted “the transition from an
26 industrialised age to an information age” would produce “an economy and a society based on digital technologies and the removal of spatial boundaries” envisioning “an ‘electric cottage’ from which workers could work remotely” (Toffler 1980); and in the 1990s by Makimoto and
Manners (1997) who predicted “the development of technology would allow people to choose to become mobile across the globe: “the 21st century will be the millennium which resurrects for humans a dilemma which has been dormant for 10,000 years – humans will be able to ask themselves: ‘Am I a Nomad or a Settler?’ ” (Schlagwein 2018: 3). It is from this basis that
Makimoto and Manners introduced the term “digital nomad” to represent the affirmative response to this question that chose “nomad” as its answer, denoting those who would choose to be “freed from constraints of time and location” (Olga 2020).
This tradition of thought has culminated in the figure of the digital nomad and the field of digital nomadism which “uses IT to return people to a state where the place to live and the place to work are not spatially restricted. Digital nomads can, and do, move freely around the globe without home and work addresses, creating a form of neo-nomadism. (Schlagwein 2018: 1-2)
The predictions of this literature, leading up to and including the arrival of the Digital Nomad, present this figure and its lifeworld as the utopic product of these changes in technology and production, as the best possible outcome that could be hoped for and achieved between the individual and the society they live in. In this formulation, mobility is posited as the desired outcome and strived for product of these societal changes, the telos to which these processes are being directed. While there is a living and breathing reality behind the figure of the digital nomad, its existence represents only one of many tendencies and possibilities emerging from these changes in society. It is a tendency that continues and reinforces current trends in
27 technology and the economy, a figure selected as ideal because its actions continue production in its current form while also expanding the realm of freedom and possibility in dictating how one approaches production and integrates it into their lives. Since Makimoto and Manners coined the term in the late 1990s, the Digital Nomad has moved beyond its role as a prophetic designator of a possible future population and become a cultural figure that people aspire to be, that they alter their actions and behavior in accordance with. It has moved beyond the utopic to become normative, the figure that the current mode of production in the information age needs in order to continue, the example that proponents of the current economy give to justify its expansion and direction. The truth, however, is that this tendency giving birth to the possibility of the digital nomad co-exists alongside a host of other contradictory and competing tendencies.
The progression of all the trends that these futurists identified are so complex and over- determined that they do not lead to one telos, but create many, both utopic, dystopic and everywhere in-between. The new urban crisis has shown that changes in production, technology and place have indeed delivered mobility to the masses; however, far from being delivered in its utopic form, it has been pushed on people in different contexts who have unequal access to it as a practice, where the question of agency and choice over mobility is ambiguous in most cases and even absent in others. Among those who do have more of a choice to engage in mobility, they have to decide what ends to put it to and the forms it can take, the normative figure of the digital nomad remaining abstract enough that its formulas, logics and practices need to be created and experimented with. While the digital nomad serves as the ideal to be achieved, the manner in which various individuals attempt to achieve this ideal leads to wide variation in both the practices and figures who will emerge out of this process, creating a heterotopic space where
28 both the digital nomad and its siblings are beginning to emerge. Thus, while the digital nomad could be taken as a small and strictly defined population, its role as a normative ideal expands its host of operation to all those living through these changes in society and the new urban crisis, serving as one possible outcome among many that mobility can achieve, an outcome whose shape and nature will change as more and more people experiment with its possibility.
The emergence of the popular figure of the Digital Nomad represents an important step forward in beginning to denote and bracket the populations clustering in this new space, identifying common trends in the conditions and outcomes of their mobility and serving as a normative identity being embraced by those engaging in urban prospecting. The current definitions of the digital nomad continue to refer to a variety of disparate figures engaging in mobility to and away from the city, its loose definition operating as a vague and undefined category that obscures the variety of actors entering and emerging from this field of definition. I contend that the moniker of the digital nomad refers not to a coherent and stabile population with a positive representation but to a field of discourse, culture, class and subjectivity in-formation
(Bordieu 1973;1984; Swidler 1986; Thompson 1966) I will refer to as digital nomadhood.
Digital nomadhood is the cultural field in which these different populations come to overlap and interact with one another, generating and contesting representations of self and evaluative frames of mobility investment. The cultural figures, representations of self, practices of mobility and ways of life generated in this field are the product of the divergent reactions and responses this heterogenous population has to the anomic space opened up by new urban crisis and constitute the material that will be analyzed to investigate the phenomenon and outcomes of urban prospecting. This dissertation will contribute to continuing to positively define the actors
29 operating in and emerging from this cultural field by disaggregating the figure of the digital nomad. I will be looking at how these new figures are being made in two very different locations, producing a variety of new subject-positions and corresponding urban prospecting logics that will begin to reveal how these new bouts of labor mobility are coming to approach place differently based on their changing connections to employment and self forged through their mobility.
To this end, I will employ a series of typologies as analytical tools to chart and identify the different bases of subjectivity and class formation emerging out of the new urban crisis.
These typologies operationalize and approach the digital nomad as an ideal type to parse out and disaggregate the variety of actors who are being thrown towards mobility by the new urban crisis. As an ideal type, the digital nomad represents the extremes in the changing relationships these populations are experiencing between place, employment and the self through mobility, exhibiting the heights of what can be achieved in this field of action. By employing the digital nomad as an ideal type, I hope to study the class formation let loose by the new urban crisis in a similar way to how Hardt & Negri (2005) and Paolo Virno (2004) used the multitude to study class formation in the transition to post-fordism. For these authors, even though the cognariat and care workers associated with the multitude were a minority of the workforce, their labor conditions of flexibility and mobility revealed the hegemonic post-fordist labor conditions that were expanding to the rest of the labor force and global multitude. By approaching digital nomads as an ideal type, I am essentially aiming to study similar and new changes in labor relations relating to flexibility and mobility as they are expanding to all of those experiencing the situation of the new urban crisis. Taking the digital nomad as an ideal type whose conditions are
30 expanding to the broader workforce and being changed in the process, I will look at the variety of actually existing populations whose relations are changing in different intensities and proportions. By constructing typologies measuring variation in quality and quantity off of this ideal type, I aim to capture the multiple ways that the overall transitions between the terms of place, employment, and self underlying the new urban crisis are changing and making new bases for class formation. These changes are navigated both in differing intensity but also in differing forms with subjectivity, local variation, and backgrounds of these populations producing slightly different rifts on the same phenomenon.
To begin this process of disaggregating the digital nomad, I construct a general typology in Chapter 3 which locates past coherent subject-positions that proceeded the new urban crisis and isolates the function that mobility played in each position in reproducing that particular figure both subjectively but also objectively. I then place them on a spectrum and gradient in terms of whether the mobility followed and served the interests of labor versus capital, consumption versus production, of the self versus employment. This general typology serves as the baseline against which I measure and relate the new classes and figures emerging out of the new urban crisis and digital nomadhood. Since I am arguing that both production and consumption are changing, the reproduction of these already-existing groups and the role mobility plays in these processes are also changing. These processes are unfolding unevenly and sporadically, approaching these already existing populations and those who aspired to enter them, causing ambiguity and uncertainty in knowing whether the type of mobility they engage in will bear the fruits that they used to, or that they expected. The figures and groups that defined and elicited the types of mobility captured in the general typology are beginning to fade away,
31 and the different forms and practices of mobility are left standing alone, aspirants left without the cultural figures and frameworks of these groups to guide them.
Actors are left to choose amongst these different forms of mobility operating in a new field of uncertainty as to what lies at the end of them. This leads to actors engaging in new and different types of mobility they see modelled by similar others, those thrown into this field of uncertainty from different groups and class positions, all trying to find the type of mobility that will lead them to stability in differently constructed forms. Mobility becomes both more frequent and variable as it is experimented with to see the different outcomes that it can achieve, leading to fluctuating instability in how it is used to reproduce the actor as that actor questions what they are trying to be. It is from this basis that I construct place-based typologies in Chapters 4 and 5 to capture how these experimentations with mobility are coalescing into new instances of group and class formation. These place-based typologies each keep place constant in order to uncover the role that place plays framing how mobility is approached, employed and stabilized, placing the individuals into new groupings by locating their use of mobility on the same labor versus capital, self versus employment spectrum constructed in the general typology, looking for continuity and disjuncture between the mobility of past subject-positions and those arising in response to the new urban crisis. I use these general and place-based typologies to chart how all of these practices of mobility coming from different backgrounds and places are being grabbed onto and redeployed to serve different functions in relation to production and consumption, to employment and the self, creating new cultural scripts and subjective figures that will be the successors to these previous subject-positions, the new classes of the regime of flexible accumulation that need to be reproduced to reproduce the whole regime, but that are also more
32 fluid and porose than those that came before. Digital Nomadhood then is the field of variation in outcomes and class formation produced by these experimentations with mobility, the digital nomad one normative outcome that both propels people into this field of experimentation while also giving them something solid to grasp onto into this field of anomie and normlessness.
I will begin this project by investigating the current definitions of the digital nomad and demonstrating what is already know about their size, composition and potential as a population.
From this basis, I will begin to tease out the dimensions of variation upon which digital nomadhood is being constructed, making the case that the type of digital nomad one is impacts the types of urban prospecting they are able to engage in, framing the approach taken throughout the rest of this dissertation. Pieter Levels, the founder of Nomad List, a pre-eminent social networking site for Digital Nomads, defines a digital nomad broadly: “Digital nomads, or remote working travelers, are people who live at least part of the year away from their home country while working remotely as an employee for their employer, as a contractor for companies or if they have their own business for themselves” (Levels 2021). This broad definition can include a large swath of actors, and is itself still only partial; however, it provides a starting point for beginning to understand who may be entering the field of digital nomadhood. Levels’ definition is largely constituted around being abroad for a portion of the year, away from one’s home country, and working remotely in a few different fashions. A digital nomad, from this base, then is defined by both their mobility but also by their connection to remote work, the manner in which they are connected to production forming the basis for differences in digital nomad experiences.
33 This definition, though broad, is also quite strict at the same time, qualifying only remote workers who travel internationally, setting a standard that many remote workers are probably not able to achieve, either staying in place or only travelling domestically, while at the same time dismissing those who travel abroad and work as they travel but not remotely, or who travel for work. This strict definition also emerges from the outside, a definition used to select, denote and identify members of a population, whereas the term “Digital Nomad” has been take up subjectively as a moniker and source of identity evoked by a heterogenous population. The definition of the digital nomad is too broad and results in wildly contradictory estimates of its size and composition. The term Digital nomad as a signifier covers not one homogenous population but brackets a large swath of fluid similar and dissimilar populations, a compilation of individuals and class fragments growing in size and complexity as more and more people find themselves caught up in changing relationships to geography, employment and mobility produced by the digitization of work and the new urban crisis. I will show that digital nomads may be a niche population at the moment, but the field of remote workers who could become digital nomads is growing exponentially and already constitutes a base of several million people globally.
The Trend of Digital Nomadhood and its Composition
How big is the population of digital nomads and what is already know about them? Is this a niche population or a growing population and trend to take seriously? To answer these questions, and qualify my assumptions, I will be looking at estimates of the global digital nomad community provided by Nomad List as well as demographic and survey data collected by various organizations on this growing trend. To begin with, Levels (2021) at Nomad List argues
34 that “there are currently 10 million to 100 million digital nomads in the world in 2020,” calculating the number of self-described digital nomads at roughly 16 million. MBO Partners
(2019) released a report on the rising trend of Digital Nomadism where they found that "4.8 million independent workers currently describe themselves as digital nomads" in the United
States in 2018, and 7.3 million in 2019. Levels takes this 4.8 million number and argues it is
1.5% of the US population and applies this same percentage to estimate that there are roughly 10 million digital nomads in Europe, giving a total of approximately 15 million digital nomads in
Western countries that produce and support the work they perform. He then explains that if the definition were broadened to include “people who work remotely at least part of the year in a country different from their home country the number might double to 33,242,790 or triple to
49,864,185 digital nomads in the entire world.” The characteristics that are and are not included in whatever definition of digital nomad is being used to size up this population shifts estimates of its size wildly. The small change Levels makes above to include not only self-identified digital nomads, but also part-time mobile remote workers drives up his original estimate from 15 million to anywhere between 33 and 50 million digital nomads.
This definitional slipperiness, and wild variation in the estimates of this population’s size, is a result of both the individually invoked and subjective boundaries of this identity, as well as a result of the hallmarks of digital nomadhood -- working remotely and being mobile -- increasingly coming into the reach of broader swaths of the population. MBO Partners (2019) found that 14 million traditional workers in the US were planning on becoming digital nomads over the next 2-3 years, with an additional 42 million responding they might in 2018, a total of
56 million aspirants in the United States alone. The term digital nomad has ceased to operate as a
35 discrete category of worker or lifestyle practitioner and has become a broader aspirational identity and way of life pursued and idealized by a growing segment of the traditional workforce.
The ability to see this way of life as attainable and actually claim this identity has been bolstered by the proliferation of remote work experiences amongst the traditional work force. “According to Gallup, 43 percent of Americans work remotely at least some of the time, and the share of these workers who work remotely 4-5 days per week increased from 24 percent in 2012 to 31 percent in 2017.” (MBO 2018). The expansion of remote work within the mainstream is growing, allowing for the possible decoupling of work from location for larger numbers of the global population than ever before. This rapid movement of people entering the field of digital nomadhood can be seen reflected in survey results asking how long respondents have been digital nomads, with a Flexjobs survey of over 500 digital nomads finding that 42% of their respondents had been digital nomads for less than a year, 33% for 1-5 years, and 24% have been digital nomads for more than 5 years (Courtney 2020). The Workers of the World: Data on
Digital Nomads survey of 150 digital nomads found that 28% of their respondents had been
“location independent” for 0-6 Months, 20% for 6-12 Months, 18% for 1-2 Years, 13% for 2-3
Years, 7% for 3-4 Years and 14% for more than 4 years (Knudsen & Conaway 2017). The growth of remote work experiences among the population at large gives the existing trend of digital nomadhood performed by a cadre of highly mobile and visible individuals a widespread reach in shaping how newly remote populations can conceive of the possibilities opened up by this operational characteristic of digital nomadhood.
The term Digital Nomad as a figure, trend, and cultural discourse serves as a sign-post, lightning rod, and pull factor bringing people toward remote work and mobile lifestyles brought into being by a minority cadre of already existing digital nomads. As more remote workers enter
36 this field, they will come from different backgrounds, work in different fields, and come with different values and aspirations, all of which will pluralize the experiences and attributes associated with digital nomadhood and ultimately test and push against the limits of the definition of digital nomad as it exists now.
“The term "digital nomad" has been used and abused over the last decades, including in shady online courses and get rich quick schemes, and for that reason many remote workers who travel are wary of using that term to describe themselves. Unfortunately the alternative terms haven't taken off yet. The faster that remote work becomes mainstream, the faster the term digital nomad will go out of fashion and we'll see it as normal that people work from different countries based on their personal preferences in living.” (Levels 2021)
The widely shifting estimates of the number of digital nomads in the world outlined above reveal that the term digital nomad might already be in the process of going out of fashion. The broadness in these estimates show that this term, especially as a definitional basis for measurement, is already obscuring a large amount of variation and heterogeneity brought into being by the expansion of this population’s base. The time has indeed come to move beyond this loose definition and begin to identify the alternative terms and populations that have been obscured beneath it.
How else do these loose definitions of digital nomads obscure the population they purport to signify? How can the successors of the term digital nomad begin to be identified and new constellations of identity, employment, and mobility be charted out and explored? Looking at a series of surveys and estimates of digital nomad populations reveals that this floating population of anywhere from 10 to 100 million digital nomads, counter to prevailing stereotypes of digital nomads as young single footloose American men, “are a diverse group, made up of no single
37 generation, profession, or socio-economic class (MBO Partners 2018). Demographics provide one avenue for finding differentiation within this floating population. In terms of gender and generation, MBO partners found that “while [digital nomads] skew young and male, one-third are female and 54 percent are over the age of 38.” The Flexjobs survey found that “there are more women (70%) digital nomads than men (30%)” and that “27% identify as millennials or gen Z, 41% identify as gen X, and 32% identify as baby boomers or the silent generation.” The
Workers of the World: Data on Digital Nomads survey found that 51% of digital nomads were female while 47% were male and that most respondents were aged 25-34, with 20% of respondents aged 35- 44. In terms of relationships and family ties, the Flexjobs survey found that, unlike the single stereotype, “61% of digital nomads are married and 39% are unmarried”.
Of those who are married, “31% of married digital nomads’ partners travel with them full-time,
38% travel with them part-time, and 32% don’t travel with their partners at all”. Both keeping with the assumption that digital nomads are solo-travelers but also subverting the assumption that they are childless, “26% of digital nomads have children 18 and under [and of] those with children, 59% say their children don’t travel with them at all.” When it comes to nationality and place of work and residence, the Workers of the World: Data on Digital Nomads survey found that of its 152 respondents, 31 nationalities were represented: 64 US citizens, 88 International, with their respondents working in a total of 43 Countries: 45% in Asia, 16% in Western Europe,
14% in Central and South America, 9% in Central and Eastern Europe, 6% in the US, 3% in
Africa, 2% in Canada, 2% in the UK, 2% in the Middle East, and 1% in Australia and New
Zealand. The Flexjobs survey found that the top places their respondents travelled to were America (53%); Western Europe (18%); Asia (13%); all over the world (12%).
38 The conflicting survey findings in relation to the demographic composition of digital nomads -- 70% versus 30% being women, 45% versus 13% working and travelling in Asia, etc. -
- further demonstrate the tension inherent in the looseness and limits of the term digital nomad and point to the overwhelming heterogeneity existing within this population and who is considered a part of it. This dissertation will take a stab at beginning to disaggregate this population along the axes of mobility, employment, and place. Being a digital nomad is not just about having a specific relation to mobility, but also to work, place and the self. When these changes align in a particular way, it results in some people becoming digital nomads. It is a response to a set of conditions that is impacting a large segment of the working population, from precarious to white-collar workers, but not everyone is responding in the same way by picking up and moving to a new place and being mobile. Why they are not is that although the nature of work is changing, these other factors do not necessarily change. There are a lot of changes happening in these domains: for some it pushes people towards digital nomadhood, while blocking others from entering it. The opposite of the digital nomad is the gig worker who experiences changes in work but in a way that hollows out their agency and choice, precarity and flexibility induced on them as opposed to having been “chosen”, the mobility of an uber driver forced and made more frequent while also being constrained on a local scale. My case study operates in this changing land-scape, urban prospecting a phenomena that, while aimed at digital nomads in this project, could be used to study these changes across the social field.
Understanding how these various fluid sub-populations underlying the digital nomad are deciding where to invest their mobility will aid in the project of tracing out and analyzing the emergent trajectories of labor mobility let loose by the urban crisis and their resultant impacts on urban networks globally. I take the stance that what kind of digital nomad one is affects the
39 urban prospecting calculus that one employs, putting forward the need to learn who these individuals are and how they interpret their position within the new urban crisis and their own mobility. Where can these plural constellations of labor mobility and the logics behind them be viewed and investigated? What spaces and infrastructures will they create to aid in their mobility and search for a spatial fit?
Co-Living Spaces
This population finds itself faced with an uneven geographic distribution of economic opportunity created and further entrenched by globalization, siloed in the global city, tenure in the “space of flows” (Castells 2010) becoming a key factor in determining their life outcomes.
The ability to maximize one’s economic opportunity becomes vitally connected to one’s ability to access the spaces where these opportunities are the most readily available. “Relocating is like an investment: you spend money up front, to cover the direct costs of the move and your living expenses until a job becomes available, in exchange for a better job later” (Moretti 2013: 159).
This connection between geographic mobility and social mobility is not new (Balan, Browning,
& Jelen, 1973; Bell C., 2001; Fischer, 2016; Gottko & Sauer, 1989; Rubinowitz & Rosenbaum,
2000). What makes the digital nomad’s relation to mobility unique is that their economic opportunities are temporary and episodic. They are expected to pivot geographically whenever one temporary job ends so that they can take advantage of economic opportunities located elsewhere. To isolate these instances of labor mobility and look at how this practice takes on particular cultural meanings, generates evaluative frameworks, and produces variegated forms of urban prospecting, I will be confining my empirical ethnographic study to co-living spaces.
These sites act as a window through which to study digital nomads while they are in the midst of
40 geographic flight, looking at the social dynamics and factors that direct and inform this particular form of labor mobility. I argue that co-living spaces, and the specific practice of co-living, have arisen as a specific response to the needs of the digital nomad. These sites give digital nomads flexible access to high priced real estate markets in “global cities”, while at the same time exposing them to other members of their class. I will demonstrate how co-living spaces meet these needs, and then provide evidence of the urban prospecting practices that emerge in the context of co-living spaces.
There is a fair amount of journalistic evidence to suggest that co-living spaces are proliferating all over the globe (Caulfield, 2017; Fichelson 2018; Fix 2017; Lim 2017; Milazzo
2017; Mok 2017; Motley 2017; Spinks 2017; Ting 2017), each set up serving the needs of different yet similar populations. Residential complex co-living spaces are large residential developments anchored around providing long-term, shared housing meant to lower living costs and recreate a sense of community in the anomic urban space of large cities. Incubatorial co- living spaces are another form which seek to provide an incubational infrastructure and residential social network which can be used to facilitate economic development within sectors of the global city. Then there is the hostel-like branch of co-living spaces which provide individuals with transitory, short-term access to cultural consumption sites, economic opportunities and shifting social networks, providing the infrastructure that supports high rates of mobility. I chose to focus on both the incubatory and hostel-like types of co-living spaces as they served as the best window from which to observe this highly mobile population of digital nomads. Comparisons between these different sites hold promise in identifying how the new
41 urban crisis is being navigated differently by varied populations, constituting the comparative approach I will follow throughout this project.
The Project of Urban Prospecting
This dissertation looks at how the relationships between the terms of work, place and the self, concretized in space and brought together by different forms of mobility, have changed since Saskia Sassen (2001) wrote about the emerging dominance of Global Cities in orchestrating these processes. In this framework, the socio-spatial formation of the global city came about due to the mobility of capital which started choosing different places in the global south with lower costs of labor as being capable of hosting industrial production and the types of workers and selves that were being selected to perform this labor. This geographic re-siting of production and shifting configuration of the relationships between these terms was accomplished through corresponding changes in the nature of work in the firm that unbundled certain kinds of administrative producer services labor that made organizing globalized production possible into small flexible firms. These firms then chose to relocate to global cities for their agglomeration economies and proximity to similar firms, corporate headquarters, required labor forces and attendant global infrastructures, changing the places they chose to locate and concretizing new relationships between the terms of work, place and self in the social form of the global city. I am arguing that since the emergence of global cities roughly 25 years ago, the relationships between these terms have started to shift again; changes in the nature of place, namely the new urban crisis, have pushed forward new forms of mobility driving labor to new places and locations.
This is also coupled with changes in the nature of work that have digitized production and allowed labor to be performed from anywhere at the extreme scale of the individual remote
42 worker, unbundling the producer services firm and altering the types of places that these workers pursue and ultimately where production itself can be sited globally.
Mobility plays a key role in establishing new relationships between these terms, with capital, industrial corporations and flexible producer services firms all choosing to be mobile and to relocate based on what they were looking for in different places dictated by the needs of their own subject-positions, engaging in their own historically unique forms of urban prospecting.
Capital has always been made out to have more agency in its mobility while labor is more sedentary and stuck in place; even if labor engages in mobility, it is to the sites of capital’s choosing dictated by the monopoly on employment that it wields. Labor’s needs for meaningful lives, conceptions of self and the forms of consumption that allow for greater choice in these pursuits has almost always had to be sacrificed to the needs of work and the places it has been located by capital. If labor chose to relocate to particular places guided by the needs of the self and consumption over employment, they would run the risk of “failure” or rather entering precarious situations where their ability to reproduce themselves would be put into question. I argue that the ability of labor to break with these existing structures of place and employment set up by bouts of capital mobility in the expanded pursuit of the self is made possible and enhanced by the emergence of remote work and its attendant forms of mobility. The new urban crisis sets the mass adoption and experimentation with these forms of mobility into motion by actively pushing more and more people into precarious situations that makes mobility an option to begin with a host of unexplored repercussions. My dissertation looks at these forms of labor mobility let loose by these changes in place and work that have activated new sites as capable of hosting productive and consumptive processes if they can just make this population’s mobility attracted
43 to a particular location. The making of this attraction to place, the urban prospecting logics that guide and shape this new form of labor mobility, are formed and contested in the collisions and encounters that these mobile populations have with the places they flow to and with similar others. The subjectivities of these populations and their emerging discourses of urban prospecting serve as the terrain upon which labor’s reaction to the new urban crisis, and the development of potential spatial fixes to it, is being hashed out and shaped. The spatial outcomes of urban prospecting in its totality present serious material consequences for the places they choose to relocate as well as to those they do not, this dissertation serving as an attempt to parse out these consequences and the mechanisms by which they can be influenced.
A Note on Method
To embark on the project of urban prospecting proper, to get at the subjectivities, discourses and impacts of this population on the socio-spatial formations they flow to, I employ a mixed methods approach, charting this populations’ global movement using social-network methods from the Computational Social Sciences (Lazer et al. 2009) while approaching this population and the construction of its urban prospecting logics in space through comparative multi-sited ethnographic case studies. To chart the global labor mobility of my digital nomad population and identify patterns of movement congealing into historically and geographically specific constellations of mobility, I built and mapped a social network model based on data from the digital nomad social networking website nomadlist.com which charts how this population is making new global networks between 747 cities, comparing the locations that digital nomads invest their mobility in to measures and rankings of global cities and the functions that designate them, looking at how they continue to relate to the patterns of
44 agglomeration that global cities perform as well as diverge from. My network model shows that digital nomads are continuing to flow to global cities while also beginning to move to offbeat and off the map cities outside their sway. These new circuits of mobility show the growing potential of this mobility to alter existing global urban networks of production and spark changes in the socio-spatial formations they flow to. To understand the urban prospecting frameworks underlying and guiding this digital nomad mobility to and away from the global city, I conducted a global multi-sited ethnography (Burawoy et al 2000; Marcus 1995), with one month of ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the PodShare co-living space in the global city of Los
Angeles, and two months at the Ghoomakad co-living space in the offbeat city of McLeod Ganj,
India. Combining social network methodology with multi-sited ethnography allows me to take an innovative approach to the study of digital nomads and urban prospecting, allowing me to make certain claims, and explore aspects of this phenomenon, that these methods in isolation would not allow.
In order to unite these differing types of methods and their accompanying data, I approach urban prosecting and the specific forms of labor mobility it produces as a case of what
Tim Cresswell (2010) describes as a constellation of mobility. According to Cresswell, constellations of mobility are “historically and geographically specific formations of movements, narratives about mobility and mobile practices…particular patterns of movement, representations of movement, and ways of practising movement that make sense together.” (Cresswell 2010: 17-
19). For the purposes of studying urban prospecting as a constellation of mobility, I operationalize it as the historically and geographically specific mobile manner in which individuals reacting to the new urban crisis string together different places in the course of their
45 life path in pursuit of their futures and different life possibilities, producing macro patterns of movement globally along with corresponding representations of this movement. These constellations start from individual paths of mobility that actors make between locations and unfold temporally and spatially outwards from an origin point, the mobility embarked on only having meaning initially in the motivations that send an individual from one point to another.
The overall shape and pattern this makes is indiscernible until enough mobility has occurred that there are overlapping and interlocking strands and points that have shaped the individual and call for the assignation of meaning and definition from the individual themselves. The overall pattern or constellation, and how the actor reflexively makes sense of it, then changes how the actor pursues their next jaunt of mobility and adds a point to the constellation, the actor trying to keep their next bout of mobility in line with the constellation that has already occurred to intentionally change, shape or complete it.
These individual and micro constellations of mobility overlap in shared locations, each mobile individual impacted and shaped by each other’s representations of their own mobility, influencing what kind of future mobility they will engage in and where they will seek to invest it.
As these individual constellations of mobility begin to overlap and converge in the locations these individuals cluster in, they begin to form and congeal into larger constellations of mobility, that then when taken at the aggregate and macro level reveal global emerging routes or circuits of mobility, that both shape and are shaped by the individual constellations of mobility that created them. These macro level constellations of mobility can be studied in comparison with and in isolation from the individual level constellations of mobility that made them, as both the motivator for some of these individual bouts of mobility as well as their outcomes, attempting to
46 parse the general conditions that make these macro constellations possible as well as the particular motivations that drove their construction. Observing these constellations on the macro scale and as historically specific allows us to look at how digital nomad and urban prospecting mobility both creates new constellations of mobility while also interacting with, following and modifying other already existing constellations of mobility like those created by Global City networks and processes, global nomad and backpacker circuits, and all the historically specific forms and circuits of mobility performed by the various populations preceding the digital nomad in my general typology, etc. Operationalizing the concept of constellations of mobility allows me to study the formation of these urban prospecting specific constellations of mobility from the micro to the macro scale and back. I study the former through interviews and multi-sited ethnography asking biographical questions and attempting to chart the paths (or routes) that these individuals took and the decision-making that brought them to these locales and the field of digital nomadhood; and the later through the use of network methods plotting digital nomad movement globally between cities to chart, identify, and compare the macro constellations of mobility they are forming and how they interact with other already existing constellations.
By using network methods to chart the global digital nomad constellations of mobility, I will be following a similar approach to a series of projects performed by researchers studying the supply side of the platform economy and remote work (Friederici & Graham 2018; Graham et al.
2017; Lehdonvirta et al. 2018; Wood et al. 2018a, 2018b; 2018c). These researchers focused on the macro-economic supply-side dynamics of remote work platforms like Upwork, using social network methods to map where these jobs were being created, in terms of national origins of the firms and companies creating these contracts, and where labor for these contracts was being
47 found. They further dug into the make-up of these global labor pools by mapping the potential versus actual labor supply on the largest remote work platforms globally while interviewing these workers to understand how they interact with these platforms and navigate this global labor market. Their use of network and spatial computational methods parsed out how supply side changes in the nature of work affected the distribution of jobs and their attendant life possibilities geographically. While these methods were able to provide a snapshot of the global distribution of this new form of work, they were limited in asking questions relating to the variation in the types of work and workers that underpins the shape this distribution takes. Who are there workers?
What type of labor are they performing? How is this shaped by their backgrounds? What drew them to remote work? What role does remote work play in their lives? And ultimately how do the different answers to these questions determine the global geographic distribution of remote work that the platform economy researchers were able to map? While these methodologies provided a geographic macro-account of these changes in work and its distribution, what is lost is a view of the role that place plays in shaping what types of individuals become remote workers as well as how different places come to be sites of work outsourcing for different reasons. This is where the use of ethnographic and interview methods could shed some light.
Ethnographic studies like Richard Llyod’s Neo-Bohemia (2002) guide the approach to ethnographic methodology that I will employ in this study. In Neo-Bohemia, Llyod was studying the emergence of new types of spaces in the city where artists and bohemians were moving for their low costs of living. He argued they were creating new cultural milieus that both acted as sources of value raising property prices and fueling gentrification while also acting as sources of labor and value creation for the globalizing cultural economy. Llyod embedded himself in the
48 lifeworld of this population, in the neighborhood of Wicker Park with its coffee shops, bars, and other enclaves of social reproduction and cultural consumption, to understand who these people were, the dynamics that drew them to Neo-bohemia, the nature of communities they formed, and the variation in experiences and outcomes they had there. By investigating the field of cultural production in place, Llyod was able to identify the diversity of mechanisms by which these people were able to attach to neo-bohemia, the plurality of motivations that drove them there, and practices that allowed them to make a living while continuing to connect to place. While
Llyod’s ethnography was able to show how this population and its cultural milieu were drawn into the machinations of global capital, due to Llyod’s strict focus on how this was happening in one neighborhood in one city, the view he provided of Neo-Bohemia and the growth of the culture industry is a partial one. While his observations of Chicago are insightful and informative, they do not allow him to put what he sees happening in Wicker Park into a broader context, of being able to parse out the contingencies of Chicago in the construction of the cultural milieu observed in Wicker Park versus the contributing role of those processes producing the general construct of Neo-Bohemia in different locales globally.
Multi-sited ethnography would allow for comparisons to be made between sites to identify how place itself affects these processes, parsing out what factors are contingent on place versus those that are held in common across cases. Furthermore, being able to qualify how these multi-sited ethnographic case studies fit within the macro-level trends being studied would allow for a consideration of how representative of what is observed in one case is of the broader phenomenon in question. This question of qualification and representativeness is one that computational methods and network models are uniquely suited to answer (Lazer & Radford
49 2017; Manovich 2016; Piper 2016; Small, Manduca, Johnston 2018). By undertaking a multi- sited ethnographic case study of the cultural milieus of digital nomadhood in two very different locations, and putting them into the broader global macro-context of urban prospecting and digital nomad mobility through a social network model, I am able to talk across cases and situate them amidst the different manifestations and dynamics of urban crisis motivated labor mobility, offering a unique, nuanced and qualified perspective on this broader phenomenon. My methodology allows me to apply the benefits of both network methodology with those of ethnographic methods while building on their shortcomings. My network model provides a macro-overview of how digital nomad mobility is distributed globally, allowing me to identify particular circuits of mobility for further investigation, specifically mobility to the global city and mobility away from it to offbeat cities. My multi-sited ethnography allows me to drill into these particular circuits of mobility to investigate the subjectivities that produce them, as well as compare how these subjectivities are drawn to and shaped by the places they go and particularities of the places themselves.
To approach and understand the urban prospecting logics and decisions that framed and produced these individual level constellations of mobility on the agentic level, I employ multi- sited ethnography in these shared and overlapping spaces where individual digital nomad constellations of mobility converge, conducting participant observation and biographical mobility and employment interviews to graph and chart the constellations of mobility that my respondents had engaged in, asking how they made sense of it, and how the meaning they gave to their constellation played a role in motivating the particular jaunt of mobility that led them to my sites of study. I structure my ethnography through the elaboration of place-based typologies
50 of the populations I find in each location, identifying ideal population types upon a spectrum of urban prospecting concerns from the ends of the self to that of employment, with place held constant in each case. These typologies will aid me in disaggregating the subject of the digital nomad by capturing the sheer variation of the actors found in each place, with the two case-study locations acting as instances of extreme difference in places being pursued in order to flesh out the contours and limits of the phenomenon of urban prospecting while also identifying its bases of similarity. This methodological approach will allow me to investigate the plethora of micro- level interpretations and reactions to the new urban crisis and chart the different trends and growing agencies emerging therein as they aggregate into macro-level forces capable of interacting with and reconfiguring global urban networks of production.
The Schema of Presentation
Chapter 1, Revisiting the Urban Question, explores the way that production and work configure the terms of place and self from the perspectives of capital and labor mobility, following the changes in these relationships from the shift from industrial to flexible regimes of capital accumulation and sparking the emergence of the new urban crisis. I argue that the new urban crisis is generated by the urban social structure being asked to reproduce two distinct circuits of capital accumulation set loose by the transition to flexible accumulation: accumulation via production and accumulation via finance. These distinct circuits of accumulation utilize the elements of urban social structures differentially, often at cross purposes. This complicates and produces continued crises in the reproduction of capitalism, as well as continually shifting relations between elements of the urban social structure, producing a plurality of urban forms. I investigate the emerging reactions and solutions to these crises, including remote work and mobility to different urban social structures, as grounds for both the continuation and potential
51 transformation of the whole global capitalist system. Building off of Manual Castell’s framework in The Urban Question (1977), this chapter elaborates a theoretical framework for approaching the new socio-spatial formations in this study and the changed relationships between work, self and place that underly them.
Chapter 2, Digital Nomad Cities, looks at how the new types of mobility induced by the new urban crisis open up new locations as habitable and as sources of mobility investment for digital nomads, To this end, I constructed and analyzed a social network model of their mobility between cities globally and identified two distinct circuits of mobility: (1) mobility to the global city and (2) mobility away from it to the offbeat city. The flow of digital nomads characterized by these two circuits of mobility, and the remote work they carry with them, follow similar yet divergent patterns of agglomeration and settlement compared to the flows that are normally used to define and locate a global city, normally thought of as flows of capital and its corresponding command and control functions. The unbundling of the corporation and the globalization of production were seen as being the sources driving the new geographies of capital and labor leading to the agglomeration economies of the global city, the concentration of small flexible sub-contracting firms worked by a corresponding creative class. The location of work, capital and firms in these locations used to be seen as key factors driving a new global concentration of the economy, leading workers to both want and need to move to these cities to attach themselves to employment and the economy in general, otherwise finding themselves left behind. The patterns revealed by global digital nomad mobility change the field of vision from the location of small specialized firms to the class of digital nomad workers themselves, those working remote jobs and performing the labor formerly performed in the specialized firms of the global city,
52 revealing a new unbundling process occurring: not the unbundling of the corporation but the unbundling of these agglomeration economies themselves.
Chapter 3, Urban Prospecting, operationalizes the general logic of urban prospecting to aid in typology construction in the later ethnographic chapters by looking at how the three terms of work, self and place have been calculated into urban prospecting logics by various already- existing discrete populations in previous rounds of economic restructuring. By placing these already-existing populations on a general typology and urban prospecting spectrum from the privileging of the needs of the self on one end and those of employment on the other, this chapter constructs the analytic tool to be able to approach the populations of digital nomads found in Los
Angeles and Dharamsala in relation to these already existing populations. Using this general typology to sift through the digital nomad populations in this study will help to understand what subject-positions these individuals are coming from, what cultural frameworks used to guide them, and how they are coming into collision through mobility that is making the digital nomad, fragmenting, merging, and hybridizing through this collision. This sets the stage for identifying what groups and subject positions are emerging as the successors of the digital nomad and parsing out which subjects are present in each locale and how they are stitching together the new relationships between the three terms of work, self and place.
Chapter 4, ‘A Social Network with an Address’, and Chapter 5, ‘A Digital Influx in the
Himalayas’ are the start of my ethnographic case studies looking at the mobility of digital nomads to both global cities and offbeat cities while cataloguing and charting the contours of the populations underlying the empty-signifier of the digital nomad. In these chapters, I flesh out the
53 elements and variables of the general logic of urban prospecting, with the different populations acting as varied applied outcomes of these logics, constituting the differential weighting of concerns of employment, place, and mobility. I will show that urban prospecting, and digital nomadhood as a cultural field, arise from similar processes in each location, both collectively built and shaped by collisions between these various actors in collective spaces of mobility and by the juxta-position of their mobility to these locations with the cities and other locales they had previously called home.
Chapter 4 looks at how the spatial monopoly that the global city holds over economic opportunity and upward mobility persists through the urban crisis, the crisis itself making it even harder to achieve tenancy in the city demanding new forms of mobility and ways of anchoring oneself in place. Digital nomads still seek to attach themselves to global cities, like Los Angeles, but must do so on different terms which leads to a changing relationship to the city and cities in general characterized by increased mobility between cities in the pursuit of stabile life trajectories. These investments in mobility have short-term pay-outs where these mobile individuals must question whether they are grinning or groaning at the life they have built for themselves in these cities, to figure out whether they prospected correctly and hit gold, or whether the city just did not pan out, driving them to be mobile again. These experiences of success or failure in what the city offered them in terms of actualizing their future pursuits puts mobility on the table as a key tool to be utilized moving forward, each experience with a new place altering the expectations and urban prospecting logics that are brought to bear in determining the next location of flight. The PodShare connects these populations to Los Angeles, supporting the mobilities underlying its global city processes, taking in the labor mobility set
54 loose by the new urban crisis while keeping it circulating, allowing the global city to continue and intensify. While the engagements of digital nomads with Los Angeles are filled with moments of newness and uniqueness, the processes they engage in and support at the city level are a continuation of the city’s underlying social structure as opposed to an alternative or departure from them.
Chapter 5 looks at how digital nomads are increasingly beginning to leave the city for more “off-beat” locations like Dharamsala. The attainment of tenancy in these sites of alterity relies on this population’s ability to master and acquire the different forms of labor that allows each of them more individual control and authorship over their own social reproduction and lifeworlds. This population utilizes remote work to make this life of alterity in “off-beat” locales possible, leading to the making of the digital nomad as a distinct figure. I chart the spectrum and variation in digital nomad subjectivities that drive people to Dharamsala and Ghoomakad, from the backpacker to the CEO of a remote distributed company. By describing the spectrum of digital nomadhood, I argue that it can wielded by this population to the establish alternative values, notions of the good life, and structures of (re)production allowing for the possibility of escaping or reproducing the urban crisis. I end the chapter by teasing out the processes that construct the evaluative urban prospecting frames that make Ghoomakad a place to invest one’s mobility and make sense of digital nomad pursuits of off-beat geographies in general. This circuit of mobility presents a potential spatial fix to the dynamics underlying the new urban crisis, at least in that it leaves behind the global city to start its processes anew in dissimilar locations. In Offbeat Cities, unlike in Global Cities where they could connect to the city’s superstructures but not alter its base, digital nomads are able to build and shape their own
55 structures of production and consumption, contesting and altering the base of these Offbeat
Cities, bringing forward new forms of organization and settlement.
In the conclusion, The Trajectories of Lives in Collision, I compare and contrast the urban prospecting logics and digital nomad populations approached in the global city of Los Angeles versus the offbeat city of Dharamsala, pulling out the what theoretical and material consequences of digital nomad labor mobility hold for the continuation of the regime of flexible capital accumulation, the shape of global urban networks of production, and the types of places that will be pursued in the future. I end by considering what my study’s findings can reveal about life during and after the corona virus pandemic, where remote work has been normalized and expanded to an unprecedented degree and the future of the office and the city has been put into question.
56
The City in Crisis
57 Chapter 1
Revisiting the Urban Question in the Age of the New Urban Crisis: The (Re)Production of the Regime of Flexible Accumulation
In the Introduction, I argued that the new bouts of labor mobility engaged in by digital nomads were both a cause and product of the new urban crisis, the crisis itself the product of capital and labor mobility reconfiguring the relationships between work and place in socio- spatial formations globally. I also hypothesized that the labor mobility of digital nomads in aggregate, bracketed under the phenomenon of urban prospecting, can work to perpetuate the new urban crisis or produce spatial fixes to it on both local and global scales. In order to contextualize and investigate these claims, I need to explain what exactly the new urban crisis is and how exactly capital and labor mobility are tied up within it. This is the project of this chapter in which I provide a theoretical framework for contextualizing and charting how the range of labor mobility outcomes investigated in the chapters that follow are produced by and impacting the urban social structures they travel between and global urban networks of production more broadly. This framework will build upon Castells’ conception of the elements of the urban social formation, expanding the framework to account for the switch from industrial to flexible regimes of capital accumulation, in order to understand how changes in capital and labor mobility result from and are produced by changes in how different socio-spatial formations are utilized in the circuits of reproduction underlying global capitalism. Using this framework, this chapter explores the ways that production (or work) configures the relationships between place and mobility from the capital and labor perspectives in order to unpack how the digitization of labor affects this configuration and how labor mobility can reciprocally react back on the terms of production and place. I will end this chapter by speculating theoretically on how this labor
58 mobility could impact existing socio-spatial formations and urban networks, preparing to investigate how these new types of mobility change the urban dynamics of global cities as well as open up new “offbeat” locations as habitable and as sources of mobility investment in the chapters that follow.
Introduction
Robert J. Sampson (2018) recently wrote that the “contemporary urban scene is depicted by clashing narratives,” (p. 2) one extolling the hallmarks of urban rebirth (Glaser 2011; Pinker
2018; Preston and Elo, 2014; Sharkey 2018) and the other foretelling the set in of urban doom
(Florida 2017; Musterd et al. 2017; Piketty 2014; Seto et al. 2017; Tammaru et al. 2015; Wilson
[1987] 2012). These narratives are motivated by the paradox of the city being both better and worse off than it was before. “These paradoxes motivate a question: are we confronting a new urban opportunity or a new urban crisis? Cities have always been characterised by a Dickensian best of times/worst of times paradox, but many of the recent transformations are historically unique” (Sampson 2018, 4). One such historically unique transformation is found in the contemporary paradox that living in a city has become a more important factor for gaining employment, opportunity, and social mobility (Balan, Browning, & Jelen 1973; Bell C. 2001;
Fischer 2016; Gottko & Sauer 1989; Rubinowitz & Rosenbaum 2000); yet, at the same time, the city has become harder to access due to rapidly rising real estate values accelerated by financial speculation on the global market (Fischer 2016; Harvey 1989; Moretti 2013).
The causes of this contradiction have been explored from both sides of the issue: (1) the importance of the city as privileged site of employment and opportunity, and (2) gentrification
59 and real-estate speculation. While the two are inseparable in their causality of the contradiction, most explanations are isolated to one branch, with limited connections made between the two.
The first branch focuses on how the employment structures of the city have changed relative to the nation as a whole, attracting different firms as well as populations of workers (Castells
[1996] 2000, 2010; Florida 2003, 2002, 2017a, 2017b; Moretti 2017). The second branch on gentrification provides the cultural answer represented by the rediscovery of the city by the middle/upper-classes and its effects on raising real estate values (Butler 1997; Ehrenhalt 2012;
Ley 1996 ; Llyod 2002; Smith 1996; Zukin 2008, 2009, 2011). This contradiction of the city, and its overcoming, is a posed as a serious contemporary problem with stark consequences for those who are, and are not, able to the access the city. These explanations, however, are mostly premised on the city as an ideological construct. The “city” they are discussing is seen as having its own dynamics separate from the global economic system.
Manual Castells’ project in The Urban Question (1977) was directed at very similar questions of the urban as a source of unique contemporary problems. Before he could even attempt to answer the questions posed about urban problems, he had to investigate what it was that was being designated and described as the “urban” in a non-ideological manner, conducting a materialist analysis of political-economy to understand the urban’s role in the capitalist social formation. The urban, as the subject of a problem, then could only be understood by investigating the ways it enunciates, and fits into, the material foundations of capitalist production. Without an appeal to the material structure of industrial capitalist production, the urban would remain a site of ideological obfuscation. For Castells, the urban was “the space of consumption: the spatial process of the reproduction of labor power” (Castells 1977, 145). The
60 urban was the space where labor power was reproduced in support of production, a fundamental element in the extended reproduction of industrial capitalism. The urban was thus the concretization of the relations of production between the different elements of the capitalist social structure: production, consumption, exchange, and administration. It was only by looking at how the elements of this social structure connected to one another and reproduced the capitalist social formation that the urban could be understood as the site of contradiction between the needs of surplus-value accumulation in the area of industrial production on one hand, and the needs of the reproduction of labor power on the other. He argued this contradiction served as the source of the urban questions facing his contemporary world, the site of the class struggle.
The question I pose is how has the space and contradictions of “the urban” during the time of industrial capital analyzed by Castells changed form in the intervening transition to post- industrial capitalism? By revisiting the urban question, I will renew a material investigation into the post-industrial capitalist formation to understand the role of the urban today, in order to reconcile and unpack the structural causes of the contradiction presented above. In this chapter, I argue that the literature on post-industrialization (Bell 1979; Blackburn 1972; Esping-Anderson
1993; Harrison 1994; Harvey 2005; Henwood 1979), neoliberalism (Babb 2009; Brenner 2004;
Brenner & Theodore 2002; Harvey 2005; Ong 2006; Peck, Theodore, & Brenner 2009), and global cities (Abu-Lughod 1999; Castells [1996] 2002, 2010; Friedmann & Wolff 1982; Harvey
1989; Sassen 2001, 2005, 2016) has looked at how the globalization of production has changed the production process. While these authors do look at the effects that this is having on other parts of global society, much of it has been from the viewpoint of production and the firm. If they look at social reproduction, the state, law, ideology, etc., it is mainly from the perspective of the firm or capital, or of the effect changes in production have had on the other elements of the
61 urban structure. I argue that only looking at the sphere of production obscures a look at the global social formation that has emerged and has to be reproduced. I argue that the new system of globalized production is not merely the continuation of the industrial regime of accumulation based on relative surplus value realized in production but brings with it a new regime of flexible accumulation that cannot be fully grasped by staying in the sector of production. By focusing not on production, but on the new regime of accumulation opened up by this switch in production, I will explore how the new regime of flexible accumulation is being (re)produced by the other elements of the urban structure. Taking Althusser’s (2014) standpoint of reproduction as my guide, I will investigate the ways the world outside the sphere of production is being reconfigured by, and is acting back on, the process of accumulation itself.
In this chapter, I will be revisiting the urban question and analyzing the nature of the changes the urban capitalist social formation has undergone during the process of post- industrialization. In Section 1, I argue that the contradiction of the new urban crisis presented above is a result of the conflicting schemas of reproduction that the urban is being asked to fulfil for the two logics of accumulation represented in the regime of flexible accumulation: (1) accumulation via relative surplus value in production, and (2) accumulation by dispossession
(Harvey 2004) and financialization (Hardt and Negri 2017; Konings 2018; Sassen 2014, Tridico
2017). In Section 2, I describe the dynamics of reproduction that underlie accumulation more generally, returning to Marx (1906, 1933) and Althusser (2014), as well as explain how to grasp the connection between production and reproduction through a look at the relations between the elements of the urban social structure in Castells (1977). In Section 3, I describe how these relations between elements of the social structure are (re)produced on the level of regimes of accumulation (Aglietta 1978; Boyer 1990, Harvey 1992; Jessop 1997; Lipietz 1993; Negri 1996).
62 I then investigate the regime of flexible accumulation, conducting a descriptive analysis of the relations between the different elements of the social structure in the global city to tease out the relationships between the circuits of the two different logics of accumulation, highlighting the points where they come into conflict.
In Section 4, I outline how this contradiction has been intensified in the past 25 years by continued changes in production as well as how value is realized in the global capital formation, namely through the processes of the digitization of labor (Brown, Lauder, & Ashton 2010; Hardt
& Negri 2017; Huws & Leys 2013; Irani 2014; Schumpter 2015) and the financialization of capital. I end the chapter by exploring the openings made by these recent changes in production which allow for the emergence of new alternative relations of production. I look to the population of remote workers, or digital nomads, who are now able to work from anywhere there is an internet connection, on contracts originating all around the globe. It is within this population, and its neighboring members of the mobile middle strata of producers and reproducers, that I hypothesize that agent-centric spatial fixes are emerging in response to the new urban crisis, generating new relations of production that could ultimately transform the whole regime of accumulation.
Section 1: The New Urban Crisis and its Corresponding Question
“But the New Urban Crisis stretches even further and is more all-encompassing than its predecessor. Although two of its core features — mounting inequality and rising housing prices — are most often discussed in relation to rising and reviving urban centers such as New York, London and San Francisco, the crisis also hits hard at the declining cities of the Rustbelt and in sprawling Sunbelt cities with unsustainable economies driven by energy, tourism and real estate. Other core features — economic and racial segregation, spatial inequality, entrenched poverty — are becoming as common in the suburbs as they are in the cities. Seen in this light, the New Urban Crisis is also a crisis of the suburbs, of urbanization itself and of contemporary capitalism writ large.” (Florida 2017a)
The above quote from Richard Florida isolates the features most associated with the new urban crisis and argues that they are not unique to the sites of rising and reviving urban centers
63 alone. Florida does not see these core features of the urban crisis as tied solely to the particular socio-spatial formations of creative (Florida 2002, 2003; Ong 2007; Zukin 2008, 2009, 2011) or global cities (Abu-Lughod 1999; Castells [1996] 2002, 2010; Friedmann & Wolff 1982; Harvey
1989; Sassen 2001, 2005, 2016), those cities relying on, and urbanizing around, the privileged forms of intellectual labori (Bell 2001; Esping-Anderson 1993) that coordinate the post-industrial globalized system of production. For Florida, the new urban crisis cannot be understood solely in these sites as its core features are present in urban areas everywhere and are thus not solely attributable to changes in production associated with the transition to post-industrialism and its corresponding class structuresii.
If changes in production are a necessary but not sufficient cause of the urban crisis, then what other dynamics of the transition to post-industrialism help us make sense of the new urban crisis? What about the historical context in which the post-industrialization of production occurred caused it to unfold in the manner it did? And does unpacking this context hold the key to revealing the other possible dynamics at play producing the new urban crisis? The literature on neoliberalism (Babb 2009; Brenner 2004; Brenner & Theodore 2002; Harvey 2004, 2005;
Ong 2006; Peck, Theodore, & Brenner 2009) places the process of post-industrialization within the historical context of capital facing a crisis of overaccumulation in the capitalist countries of the North-Atlantic. They focus on the negative context of industrial accumulation realized through relative-surplus value failing to keep capital growth at a level sufficient to shareholders, leading to the stagflation of the 1970’s in the Global North. Post-industrialization was a response on the side of North-Atlantic capital to a crisis in accumulation, the former western industrial regime failing to realize the levels of exploitation in manufacturing at the rate necessary to
64 reproduce the whole system. For this crisis to be managed, capital had to find a way to circulate capital at faster rates, which required a corresponding political project: the intervention of the state into global economic policy. A switch from Keynesian based nation-state policies anchored around investment in reproducing the labor force and the means of production to policies of privatization, austerity, and financialization directed at the global stage (Brenner 2004; Harvey
2004, 2005; Jessop 1997). This neoliberal political project was carried out in support of post- industrialization, serving two main purposes: (1) managing the crisis in the realization of relative surplus value through intensified exploitation carried out through extensions/displacements in space, shifting production to the Global Southiii (Froebel, Heinrichs, & Kreye, 1981; Starosta
2016); and (2) opening up and forcing vast sectors of wealth currently outside the market into the global economy, increasing capital circulation via accumulation by dispossession and financializationiv (Harvey 2004, Hardt and Negri 2017; Konings 2018; Sassen 2014; Tridico
2017).
Finance became a leading arm of accumulation by dispossession, approaching stores of fixed capital from previous regimes of capitalist production and forcing it back into the realm of circulation, redistributing it to the capitalist class through the process of creative destruction
(Harvey 2004), both in the Global North and South. Hardt and Negri (2017) remark on the primacy of this shift from industrial to finance capital in the continued reproduction of the capitalist system, giving accumulation by dispossession a different content than Harvey (2004) and integrating it as the primary logic of capital accumulation from here on out. They argue that capital has financialized and (de)territorialized, now giving up control in organizing the relations of production within the factory. Social production now occurs across society, creating value
65 which finance institutions seek to measure and extract. Finance extracts this value through the creation of fictitious capital which estimates the future value of these assemblages of social production and speculates how to squeeze the already existing value out of the realm of social production. It also generates vast amounts of credit while keeping wages stagnate, speculating on debt futures by channeling increased consumption through debt rather than through increased wages (Tridico 2017). They argue that this new development of capital has lost all connection to productivity and has become primarily extractive, while co-existing alongside the historic formations of industrial capital still tied to productivity.
This form of accumulation has its own mechanisms which both overlap with and remain distinct from the those of accumulation via production. Thus, to only look at the realm of production, and the classes unique to it, to understand the post-industrial capitalist social formation provides us only a partial view of its different dynamics and tendencies. I must investigate the circuits which reproduce each of these forms of accumulation, at how they diverge and converge, and at how different elements and spaces are incorporated into these circuits at cross purposes. I argue that the contemporary urban contradiction is a result of the urban being asked to serve simultaneously as the site of the reproduction of accumulation via production and financialized accumulation by dispossession within the regime of flexible accumulation. To apprehend how this contradiction arises, and the spatial-temporal fixes that emerge to work around it, demands that I change my perspective from changes in the sector of production, to changes in accumulation more broadly. This brings the need to focus on regimes of accumulation (Aglietta 1978; Boyer 1990, Harvey 1992; Jessop 1997; Lipietz 1993; Negri
1996), of the differences between the relative-surplus value accumulation of industrial capital
66 and the accumulation by dispossession of finance capital. How have these changes in accumulation reconfigured the units of social structure? What new urban structures emerge? It is within these new variegated urban structures of flexible accumulation that the proliferation of emerging relations of production attempting to reproduce the regime of flexible accumulation become visible, their very number and plurality simultaneously opening up the space for both its reproduction and transformation.
A Note on Class and its Relation to the Project at Hand
Where does class fit into the puzzle of the post-industrial urban crisis? The classes identified as unique to post-industrialism and the global city only exist in a few places the urban crisis is occurring. The urban crisis is not necessarily caused by these classes but is a result of the way the logics of accumulation incorporate different populations into their circuits of accumulation. This is not to say that the classes identified as unique to post-industrialism do not play a role in producing the urban crisis; but that different groups are put into the service of these two different logics of accumulation, partaking in them at different moments of time, which causes them to take on a plurality of class definitions and relationsv. Finance capital further gives up some control over organizing and keeping these classes static, accepting whatever unit of labor it needs at any given time. As capital (de)territorialzes through financialization, it induces flexibility as a requirement of its labor force in the form of flexibility to hire and flexibility to fire (Tridico 2017). The introduction of the digitization of labor and remote work complement this flexibilization, which itself becomes a way that labor responds to the new urban crisis.
Labor, the content of class, is itself undergoing its own form of (de)territorialization.
67 Essentially, I bracket class as a concept and choose to investigate the young population that is living through and reacting to the new urban crisis, what I identify by the term and phenomenon of the digital nomad. This covers sections of multiple classes, from Ong’s talented expatriates (2007), Florida’s creative class (2002, 2003), and Sassen’s high-skill knowledge workers and low-wage service workers (2001, 2005, 2016). Like Standing (2011; 2013; 2014a;
2014b), who leaves behind the direct connection between a position in the labor process and class designation, I denote a population bounded by a shared situation. While Standing denotes the situation of precarity (the experience of its attendant processes), the boundaries of the precariat he draws are centered around emerging demands that are made against the nation state.
While he accounts for the global nature of the precariat, that the process of precaritization is occurring around the globe, he sees the process of solidarity and class building occurring at the national level. I take his lead in drawing new boundaries around different class fragments who are experiencing and reacting to a particular situation, but I want to do so in a way that accounts for the globalization of production. I choose a different but complementary situation which unites class fragments in different ways: the new urban crisis occurring at the global scalevi. I believe that the strategies that this population adopts in reacting to the new urban crisis, the ways their movement within and between cities differentially (re)produces the flexible regime of accumulation, holds the potential to produce new categories of class formation and spatial fixes to the contemporary urban contradiction.
My approach to class and the class formation, as applied to those who are united in their experiences of and reactions to the new urban crisis, unfolds in a parallel manner to how Hardt &
Negri (2005) and Paulo Virno (2004) approached the multitude in the late 1960s and 1970s. As
68 discussed in the introduction, the “multitude signifies: plurality — literally: being-many — as a lasting form of social and political existence, as opposed to the cohesive unity of the people”
(Virno 2004: 76) brought about by the economic, social and cultural transformations underlying the transition from fordism to post-fordism, from industrial and manual labor to immaterial labor. The turn towards post-fordism, and the distinctiveness of the multitude, is presented by
Hardt and Negri as a result of the new centrality that immaterial labor took in configurating production and its expansion to the whole of social production. Immaterial labor can be broken down into two types: intellectual labor dealing with “problem solving, symbolic and analytical tasks” and affective labor which “produces or manipulates affects such as a feeling of ease, well- being, satisfaction, excitement, or passion” (Hardt & Negri 2005: 108). Those forces of the multitude that are most engaged in immaterial labor processes are approached as new forces of production that play pivotal roles in the new and expanding regimes of post-fordist production amidst precaritization, and as such hold potential to alter its dynamics. Hardt & Negri argue that while immaterial workers may make up a small part of the global workforce, their labor conditions exemplify the hegemonic labor conditions that are expanding to the global labor force and the multitude as a whole, primarily the increased flexibility, mobility and precarity that engender and define immaterial labor conditions.
“The contractual and material conditions of immaterial labor that tend to spread to the entire labor market are making the position of labor more precarious. This is one tendency, for example, in various forms of immaterial labor to blur the distinction between work time and nonwork time, extending the working day indefinitely to fill all of life, and another tendency for immaterial labor to function without stabile long-term contracts, and thus to adopt the precarious position of becoming flexible (to accomplish several tasks) and mobile (to move continually among locations)” (Hardt & Negri 2005: 65-66).
69 They approach the multitude in general, and immaterial workers in particular, similarly to how
Marx approached the industrial proletariat as a minority workforce at the start of industrial capitalism whose labor conditions were being extended to all forms of labor and the social totality (formal subsumption extending towards the real subsumption of society by the labor relations of post-fordist capitalism). This hegemonic form of immaterial labor came to reshape all other existing forms of labor and therefore held the key to understanding the common conditions amongst the differentiated and un-representable multitude that could give rise to collective class actors and politics.
The class formation and subjectification of these new forces of production, however, proceed along fluctuating lines irreducible to the dynamics that birthed the proletariat, the requirements and demands of immaterial labor expanding the basis of the labor process beyond the factory to the metropolis and all other realms of social life. The cultural, the reproductive, the social, the emotional, the personal all become inputs in the immaterial labor process, bases of particularity that lead to the differentiation and individualization of the workforce inseparable from their plural and over-determined social locations. Class cannot be studied strictly by looking at an actor’s relation to the means of production when the means of production itself has expanded to the whole of society, or in each individual case, to the whole of their particular lifeworld. Adding to this, immaterial labor conditions have been extended sporadically and unevenly to the global workforce, applied and felt unevenly across the population, making the coherence of one universal class position impossible. The extreme particularity in labor conditions belying a plurality of new forces of production is what gave rise to the need for the concept of the multitude to begin with. The multitude is not the abandonment of class but the
70 new foundation for its existence and realization, the grounds from which class(es) can be made.
“Multitude is a class concept. Class is determined by class struggle. Class is a political concept, in short, in that a class is and can only be a collectivity that struggles in common. The task of a theory of class is to identify the existing conditions for potential collective struggle and express them as a political proposition.” (Hardt & Negri 2005: 104). The multitude then, and the link of immaterial labor conditions and all they bring with them, is the foundation upon which new collective struggles and actors, new classes can be created. Their collective bases for formation may already exist but they have yet to be articulated, made in practice and collaboration between actually existing singularities of the multitude.
Since the concept of the multitude, and its approach to studying class formation, was written in the 1970s and continued throughout the early 2000s, the two forms of immaterial labor highlighted by Hardt & Negri and Virno, intellectual and affective labor, have effectively congealed and been formed into the very form of the global city. Sassen’s description of the global city characterizes the labor force as primarily made up of high-wage producer services workers and low-wage service workers, the space of the city acting as the grounds upon which these new class actors are made and come into contact with one another over struggles over the terrain of the urban. This has given rise to struggles over everything from gentrification to affordable housing, transit, just development, etc., each struggle in urban space over different elements of the urban social structure putting these different actors of the multitude into shifting alliances with one another depending on their relation to both production and consumption.
Much has been written about these new congealing classes that occupy the global city (Abu-
Lughod 1999; Florida 2003; Llyod 2002, Ong 2007, Sassen 1999; Zukin 2008, 2009, 2011);
71 however, the conditions of immaterial labor, namely its demands for flexibility and mobility, have been further accelerated since then felt in both sectors of the global city’s segmented labor market. “What is called the flexibility of the labor market means that no job is secure. There is no longer a clear division but rather a large gray area in which all workers hover precariously between employment and unemployment” (Hardt & Negri 2005: 131). This aspect of the new urban crisis, along with the increased unaffordability of the city making tenancy for all but the very wealthy hard to achieve and maintain, is stretching the boundaries, limits and efficacy of the classes produced by the global city and the relationships between them.
Furthermore, the collective space of the city where these relationships between various members of the multiplicity were formed and struggled over have expanded beyond the boundaries of an individual city to the spaces between cities, to the places where those drawn or pushed towards mobility come to engage with multiple cities and their specific compositions of labor and struggles unfolding therein, all unevenly shaped by the expansion of post-fordist labor conditions and the new urban crisis. This mobility changes the terms of struggle and the opportunities presented, changing the terms along which class is made and the horizons of realization that members of the multitude can achieve both with and against each other and capital. “Nothing is more effective than the escape, the exit action. Abandonment transforms these conditions rather than assuming the conditions in which the struggle takes place as an unchangeable horizon, instead of choosing one or the other of the options presented to the problem, it changes the context in which this problem arises.” (Virno 2004) The new urban crisis begets a new collective situation that can give birth to new collective struggles and actors, new classes and class situations; however, like the multitude, those living through it all experience it
72 in varied, differentiated, and particular ways irreducible to one universal experience of the crisis.
In this chapter, I will demarcate the causes and boundaries of the new urban crisis at the level of global production and regimes of accumulation, setting forward the general conditions of the crisis in order to then approach the particular and varied experiences of the crisis that digital nomads and the population living through it are having at the agentic level. It is in their plural reactions to the new urban crisis and all it brings with it that this population will find new bases for collective action and class formation along multiple overlapping, mutually exclusive, and contradictory experiences and conditions. From this basis, I will seek to identify the potential for collective action and class formation that arises from the reactions of this population to the new urban crisis in their mobility to and from the city, capturing the differentiation and plurality of their experiences in a series of general (Chapter 3) and place-based typologies (Chapters 4 and 5) aiming to understand the new densities of class formation and experiences of the city being unleashed by labor mobility’s reaction to the new urban crisis.
Section 2: Regimes of Accumulation and the Urban Social Structure
In order to apprehend how the urban social structure has come into crisis due to the logics of accumulation utilizing it at cross purposes, I must first connect the urban social structure to the accumulation process more generally. I must go outside the viewpoint of production to grasp how the relationships between the elements of the urban social structure are oriented and configured to reproduce the process of accumulation. Only then can I understand how each particular accumulation logic makes differential use of these elements in their circuit of
(re)production. Thus, I have to grasp accumulation as the outcome aimed at and guaranteed by the different configurations of the urban social structure. I refer to the regulation school (Aglietta
73 1978; Boyer 1990, Harvey 1992; Jessop 1997; Lipietz 1993; Negri 1996) to name the level of analysis of these particular configurations, establishing the regime of accumulation as the unit of analysis in this chapter. It is the reproduction of these regimes that serves as the condition of existence for the continuation of capital, as well as the terms of its transformation. David Harvey
(1992) synthesizes the regulation school’s work on regimes of accumulation and defines them as such:
“A regime of accumulation ‘describes the stabilization over a long period of the allocation of the net product between consumption and accumulation; it implies some correspondence between the transformation of both the conditions of production and the conditions of reproduction of wage earners.’ A particular system of accumulation can exist because ‘its schema of reproduction is coherent.’ “(Harvey 1992: 121)
The regime of accumulation presents us with the element of consumption, its relation to production, and its role in the reproduction of the conditions of production that stabilizes accumulation over a long period of time. Consumption, or the reproduction of wage earners, plays a very central role in (re)producing the conditions of production and thus accumulation more broadly. This reproduction, both of production and with the consumption of wage earners, requires and/or produces a schema of reproduction guiding the relationship between these elements of the capitalist social structure.
This characterization of regimes of accumulation connects back to Marx’s writing in
Capital (1906, 1933) on the reproduction of capitalist accumulation on an extended scale. He discusses how the wage relation, that relation of exploitation which forms the basis for the capitalist mode of production, serves as the root of the realization of surplus value and must be reproduced on a progressive and extended scale to continue. This wage relation, the relation of production and exploitation deriving surplus value within the walls of the factory, relied on the reproduction of the forces of production: fixed capital and variable capital. Fixed capital was
74 understood as the physical investment in infrastructure such as the buildings and machines of the factory, a long-term investment which always has to be provided. Variable capital was understood as the labor force, the wage-earners, who could be entered into production in varying numbers and intensities. Relative surplus value was realized through the constant innovation of fixed capital, which lessened the variable capital necessary for the production process. Absolute surplus value was realized through the extension of the working day, the intensification of the wage relation which worked labor well beyond the value of its own reproduction, the wage.
“As simple reproduction constantly reproduces the capital-relation itself, i.e. the relation of capitalists on the one hand, and wage-workers on the other, so reproduction on a progressive scale, i.e., accumulation, reproduces the capital relation on a progressive scale, more capitalists or larger capitalists at this pole, more wage-workers at that. The reproduction of a mass of labour-power, which must incessantly re-incorporate itself with capital for that capital's self-expansion; which cannot get free from capital, and whose enslavement to capital is only concealed by the variety of individual capitalists to whom it sells itself, this reproduction of labour power forms, in fact, an essential of the reproduction of capital itself. Accumulation of capital is, therefore, increase of the proletariat.” (Marx 1906: 673).
The reproduction of labor power, otherwise referred to as consumption, and its expansion thus constitutes a key element in the reproduction of the industrial regime of accumulation more broadly, connecting to production but also happening outside of its walls, including different elements that need to be delineated.
Consumption, and its relationship to production, needs to follow a particular schema of realization, i.e., the concretization of certain relations of production that accord that these elements relate in a particular manner. Althusser (2014) designated the reproduction of these relations of production as the primary task in assuring the reproduction of capitalism, and thus of the accumulation it is aimed at. By reconsidering the role of the superstructure in the capitalist mode of production, he was able to delineate the unique role it plays in reproducing the labor- force, and through them the productive apparatus itself. He argued that ideological state-
75 apparatusesvii trained workers in the ideology that would reproduce the wage-labor relation on an extended scale, making sure that the relationship between consumption and production carried out in the manner it was supposed to, reproducing the wage-relation and the regime of accumulation unique to it. The superstructure, and the relations of production it directs, thus has a role to play in the mediation between production and consumption, and ultimately the reproduction of the regime of accumulation itself:
“We have come to the conclusion that we have to rise to the standpoint of the reproduction of the conditions of production in order to see what the 'function' and 'functioning' of the superstructure are. For while mere observation of the mechanisms of the economic base (we are here discussing the capitalist mode of production alone) enables us to account for the reproduction of the conditions of the productive forces, labour-power included, it by no means enables us to account for the reproduction of the relations of production.” (Althusser 2014: 148-149).
Althusser helps us further complexify and delineate the elements of the capitalist social structure outside of production that act in reproducing the whole industrial capitalist system, paving the way to looking at regimes of accumulation more broadly.
Castells’ The Urban Question (1977) takes the insights relating to the roles that consumption and the administration of the superstructure play in reproducing the industrial regime of accumulation, and delineates all of the elements implicated in the reproduction of the industrial capitalist urban social structure: production, consumption, administration, and exchange. He considers the different relations of production that emerge between these elements of the social structure and how these relationships are spatialized, their historical spatialization leading to contradictions and transformations within the reproduction of the industrial regime of accumulation. These different elements are arranged in the space of the urban in order to reproduce the industrial regime of accumulation, the social space outside the factory (the production element) holding the elements of consumption and administration, and the element of
76 exchange being the flows and relationships between these elements of the urban social structure.
Thus, Castells is able to concretize and spatialize the economic system within the space of the urban, including a place for elements of production, consumption, and administration, placing the insights gleaned above about the reproduction of the economic system via labor power and ideological state apparatuses into a systematized theoretical framework.
“By the economic system, I mean the social process by which the worker, acting on the object of his labour (raw material) with the help of the means of production, obtains a certain product. This product is the basis of the social organization - that is to say, quite simply, its mode of distribution and administration, and of the conditions of its reproduction. In fact, the product is not a different element, but only a moment of the labour process. It may always be broken down, in effect, into (re)production of the means of production and (re)production of labour power.” (Castells, 1977: 129).
It is on this terrain of the urban social structure that he analyzes the different exchanges that occur between these elements of the social structure, and the different relations of production which govern these exchanges. He outlines the dynamics that reproduce the industrial capitalist social formation centered around accumulation via production. Castells identified the contradictions emerging from the conflict of these different dynamics and their historical spatialization as the source of urban problems in his time, representing the contradiction between the urban as the consumptive space of the reproduction of labor power being confronted by the urban space of the production element which put it into question.
Castells was analyzing the urban under industrial capital which at his time was being put into question by social movements erupting on the part of workers in the consumption element demanding the system be forced to center around their reproduction and not that of production
(capital). He saw the elements of the social structure as able to struggle against the capitalist social relations by calling them into question and demanding different exchanges. He was outlining the possibility for transformation within the industrial regime of accumulation from the
77 perspective of labor. He, however, was unable to see how the capitalist class was to go about reconfiguring the relations of production in pursuit of their own project. The capitalists would fundamentally alter the shape of the elements of the urban social structure, transforming its terms through the relocation of its units and putting forward a change in the type of labor primary in reproducing the production process. These changes would lead to changes in the other elements of the urban social structure globally and produce different types of exchange and relations of production reproducing the totalizing economic system. This transformation brought accumulation by dispossession and financialization to the table as an alternative source of surplus accumulation. This produced the new regime of flexible accumulation which incorporated a sustained logic of accumulation by dispossession into the system alongside that of accumulation via production.
Taking the framework provided by Castells, concretized in an analysis of the reproduction of the industrial regime of accumulation, I will revisit the urban question by performing a descriptive analysis of the various urban social formations produced by this regime of flexible accumulation. Starting by applying this framework to the literature on post- industrialization and its spatialization in the global city will serve to expand the perspective of reproduction, linking changes in the production process to changes in the other elements of the social structure. I must look at how the terms of the labor process, i.e., the means of production and the labor-force, have changed under post-industrialism to look at how the elements of the urban social structure have transformed as well as the relations of production which reproduce them. By looking at the labor process of each logic of accumulation performed in the regime of flexible accumulation, I will identify the areas where the two different accumulation logics are
78 coming into conflict making differential demands on urban space, producing contemporary urban problems.
Section 3: The Regime of Flexible Accumulation
“Flexible accumulation, as I shall tentatively call it, is marked by a direct confrontation with the rigidities of Fordism. It rests on flexibility with respect to labour processes, labour markets, products, and patterns of consumption. It is characterized by the emergence of entirely new sectors of production, new ways of providing financial services, new markets, and, above all, greatly intensified rates of commercial, technological, and organizational innovation. It has entrained rapid shifts in the patterning of uneven development, both between sectors and between geographical regions, giving rise, for example, to a vast surge in so-called ‘service-sector’ employment as well as to entirely new industrial ensembles in hitherto underdeveloped regions” (Harvey 1992: 147)
What are the elements of the regime of flexible accumulation? What stays the same from the regime of industrial accumulation, and what is new? Where should I begin to unravel all the shifting strands of this new regime of capitalist accumulation? Above, David Harvey (1992) provides a sprawling account of the different outcomes of the regime of flexible accumulation highlighting innovations in communications and transportation technology, the growth of industrialization where it was not before amidst the emergence of new unique sectors of production not found under Fordism, alongside the growing primacy of financial services and the globalization of markets. The question is not what has changed, but how to make sense of these transformations in a manner which teases out their connections and the underlying causes and contradictions driving them? I believe that focusing on the labor and the productive elements under the regime of flexible accumulation, the new and the reconfiguration of the old, will best highlight the transformations occurring in the reproduction of the post-industrial social formation. Labor, and its role in the different units of the production element, provides us a window into how these units reproduce themselves differently and as such reconfigure the relations between the elements of the urban social structure. If the factory ceases to be the only
79 site of production, and new sites emerge, then so too do the units of consumption and administration, and the exchanges between them.
The literature on post-industrialization (Esping-Anderson 1993; Bell 1979; Blackburn
1972; Harrison 1994; Harvey 2005; Henwood 1979) discusses how the production process, the production element in the framework of the urban social structure, has been reconfigured and transformed by innovations in communications and transportation technology (Appadurai 1996;
Giddens 1990; Harvey 1989; Inda & Rosaldo 2002), allowing production to reterritorialize at the global level. This corresponds to not only a transformation of the production process, but also to a transformation of what types of labor are sought and where, ultimately transforming the content and form of labor itselfviii. When labor, and the role it plays in the production process, is fundamentally transformed so too is the entire structure of capitalist development, down to the wage relation itself and up to the whole schema of accumulation. Thus, to unpack what is unique about post-industrialization and grasp a totalizing picture of the ways the regime of accumulation has been reconfigured by these changes in production, I must chart the way these changes in labor have reconfigured the production element. I must further follow the ways the production element reconfigures, and enters into different relations with, the other elements of the urban social structure.
On the global scale, this started with a shift from the corporation operating at the national level to multinational headquarters and small flexible firms of producer services located in specific cities across the globe. The literature on Global Cities (Abu-Lughod 1999; Castells
1996, 2000; Friedmann & Wolff 1982; Sassen 2001, 2005, 2006) as well as the New
International Division of Labor (Froebel, Heinrichs, & Kreye, 1981; Starosta 2016), provides a
80 spatial account of the processes of post-industrialization (Esping-Anderson 1993; Bell 1979;
Blackburn 1972; Harrison 1994; Harvey 2005; Henwood 1979). These authors contend that post- industrialization can primarily be understood as the global restructuring of economic activity.
The unbundling of the corporation (Clawson 1980; Crouch 2001) and neoliberal corporate globalization are seen as the underlying mechanisms carrying out this restructuringix. This account of post-industrial production is still somewhat caught up in the ideals of industrial regimes of accumulation, in which the firm is in control of organizing production, just across a broader space and through more intermediaries. This led Castells ([1996] 2000) to claim that the firm can organize labor and talent wherever it wants around the world, with manufacturing and industrial production still being a large part of capital accumulation strategies. However, he also noted how its management functions were decentralizing and unbundling among small flexible contracting producer-services firms in the agglomeration economies of Sassen’s Global City
(2001, 2005, 2016).
These management sectors of globalized production became key for organizing the whole system, but also managed to capture the top ends of profit in global commodity production chains (Chase-Dunn, Garita & Pugh 2013; Smith 2012). Producer services served to accelerate and intensify the exploitation of labor by finding it in areas with looser regulations that allowed both the harder working of labor and lower capital expenditures on both fixed capital and variable capital x. This fed the intensification of the logic of accumulation via relative surplus value, fighting the crisis of overaccumulation it had enteredxi. These producer services firms themselves became a huge sector for investment, their value in the production process equating to financial value on the stock-market. This management, which is akin to the unit of
81 administration in the framework, itself became a profit sector through financialization and the reconfiguration of the production process. Producer services firms constitute both an administrative element in intensifying labor exploitation, while also serving as a productive element in its capacity for investment in the chain of capital accumulation, for its role as where capital comes from within western global cities if no longer from localized industry directly.
Cities now had to compete globally for these flows of capital and expertise, struggling to maintain or improve their position within the global commodity chain (Harvey 1989; Logan
1976; Logan and Molotch 1987; Molotch 1976). This turn led to a new localized model of urban social structure for spatial accumulation and the reproduction of capital: the global city. This model and node that the global economy and the firm came to rely on more and more served as a form that cities around the globe were trying to reproduce, both the units that comprised it and the relations of production that reproduced it.
The Urban Scale of Flexible Accumulation
I have described the role that the producer services sector plays on the global scale, but what does this production unit look like within a localized urban social structure? The concentration of these outsourced central firm functions of producer services led to the formation of agglomeration economies in specific geographic areas, making global cities or information centers comprised of firms, talent, and expertise from a broad section of specialized fields.
“Being in a city becomes synonymous with being in an extremely intense and dense information loop” (Sassen 2005: 29). Castells ([1996] 2000) refers to this loop as the “space of flows”, denoting spaces within global cities:
82 “where corporate headquarters and advanced financial firms can find both the suppliers and the highly skilled, specialized labor they require. They constitute indeed networks of production and management, whose flexibility needs not to internalize workers and suppliers, but to be able to access them when it fits, and in the time and quantities that are required in each particular instance.” (Castells [1996] 2000: 415).
This space of flows, this transnational network of production, represents the localized model for the new globalized economic organization par excellence, the form to be achieved. This sector of former tertiary services under Fordism takes on a new dominance of administrating globalized production, whereas production in the manner of manufacturing and industry is decentered and outsourced to the periphery.
This command and control function of the global city, which organizes and routes labor down the global commodity chain, is itself performed by its own unit of laborers in a small number of particular cities. These functions do not appear spontaneously but only where there is some critical mass of talent, expertise, and capital already assembled (Abu-Lughod 1999). For these authors, but particularly Sassen, these intermediary firms require a huge supply of high- skill workers, who are framed as the new elite around which globalized production occurs, the workers that allow for the mechanism of economic growth that becomes the most valued, both through their role as a production and administration element in the global economic system. The slippage between these functional elements, administrating global production from afar which intensifies production, but which also serves as the productive element for its role in capturing capital within the global city itself, leads to a whole host of other effects on the localized urban social structure. These workers are highly-educated, and their expertise lies in information and knowledge, the demand for such workers multiplying exponentially as production moves from the industrial to the post-industrial (Bell 1979). This demand results in high salaries and enticement packages from these firms to draw talent to cities. In these networks of firms, these
83 spaces of flows, it is the highly talented workers who perform the work that makes such a system function, making them the privileged subjects of this new economic organization.
The continued success and growth of the global city function is reliant on continuing to be able to court this talent and expertise to the space of flows, to the command and control centers of global cities themselves. The professionals who fulfil these functions often have the highest levels of education and are in high demand, requiring different cities to appeal directly to this class of workers, competing against one another to assemble the labor that will help them continue to capture and direct global flows. This requires an enticing of these high talent individuals to these sites of high-skill production, to these global cities. This courting of high talent has been elaborated on by both Aiwah Ong (2007) considering the talented expatriate and by Richard Florida’s (2002, 2003) musings on the Creative Class. According to these authors, cities must design themselves to capture highly talented individuals through urban design and policy, lowering the barriers to create, providing the infrastructure for innovation, and by offering a variety of lifestyle and cultural consumption enclaves. The focus of urban planning and policy then becomes the enticement of high skill workers who do not already reside in the city, drawing them from elsewhere. How are these workers drawn to the global city, and how does this reconfigure the relationship between administration, consumption, and production?
A new production element, in the form of these high-skilled workers, has been added to the localized urban social structure of the global city which brings with it different demands on consumption. Consumption itself is thus reconfigured, within global cities, from being the space for the reproduction of industrial labor, to becoming the space of the reproduction of these high- skilled workers. This consumption sector has to serve not the whole of the city but the needs of
84 these particular producers, with the industrial producers now increasingly located elsewhere around the globe. "Finally, and critical to the whole project, was what I refer to as the infrastructure to ensure maximum performance by high-income talent—the broad range of conditions enabling their work-lives. Prominently included in my analysis was a range of lowly rewarded tasks, ranging from low-level office to low-wage household work” (Sassen 2016: 100).
A focus on reproduction, on the consumptive infrastructure that maximizes the performance of high-skill talent and draws it to the global city, takes us outside the global network of production and administration, and into the homes and life worlds of the highly-skilled, to the urban site of their reproductionxii. The life worlds of high-skilled labor spill out of the glass buildings of administration, and out into the city and underlying region, into their homes, neighborhoods, restaurants, watering-holes, etc. It is in these areas that reproductive labor begins to be seen at work, and hence the reconfiguration of consumption.
The creation of low wage, service sector jobs come about as a direct result of the growth in high income jobs. These high-income jobs, the functions they perform, and the people who fill them, rely on the low-income service jobs to provide them with the lifestyle and social reproductive needs they desire and require, such as domestic workers, builders, baristas, and other service workers. Thus, a new type and form of labor is opened up in the city to service the reproduction of this high-skill class, creating a second tier of labor within the consumption element performed by these low-skill service workers. By going into the workplace of reproductive labor, looking at where low-wage reproductive work is being performed in service of the productive element of accumulation via production, I will pull out the new relationships forming between the constituent elements of the urban social structure, specifically the role of
85 consumption in this particular post-industrial spatial form. From there, I will begin to tease out the sustained implementation of the logic of accumulation by dispossession operating on this unit of the urban social structure.
What are the needs of the new productive element, and how do these needs shape the way consumption is reconfigured? High-skilled workers are viewed as having more of a determining role in shaping what forms reproductive labor will take, and thus of its distribution within and beyond the city. Castells argues that the “metropolitan centers still offer the greatest opportunities for the personal enhancement, social status, and individual self-gratification of the much-needed upper-level professionals, from good schools for their children to symbolic membership at the heights of conspicuous consumption, including art and entertainment”
(Castells [1996] 2000: 416). It is then the tastes and consumption practices of the high-skilled workers which leads to these professionals wanting to live within the cities in which they work.
Metropolitan centers, however, are generally not prepared for this large influx of talent and housing demand, many American cities having languished through the urban crisis period of the
1960-80’s (Sugrue 2005). This new demand for housing requires labor intensive gentrification, the rehabbing of old industrial areas, and the creation of consumption and lifestyle enclaves (Ley
2003; Llyod 2002). This labor-intensive gentrification spurred into action by the desires of high- skill workers creates a whole host of new jobs performed by low-wage workers, in both the construction and renovation projects performed on the built infrastructure, as well as in the staffing of service jobs within these consumption and lifestyle enclaves.
86 This process of gentrification (Butler 1997; Ehrenhalt 2012; Ley 1996 ; Llyod 2002;
Smith D. 1996; Zukin, 2008, 2009, 2011) is not only one of the key mechanisms by which the highly skilled workers of the global city are reproduced but is also one of the driving sources of capital speculation and accumulation in the global market. Neil Smith (1987, 2002) argues that rather than being considered as a secondary circuit supporting the productive circuits of producer services, social reproduction accomplished in the form of gentrification actually serves as the primary motor of capital circulation and accumulation. The money that the high-skill class is spending on consumption becomes itself a source of capital that is being reinvested in the gentrification of the built environment. This investment in the built environment is coupled with the growth of investment in low-wage consumption services that make this built environment an attractive place to livexiii. Gentrification, and the consumptive service industries reproducing the high-skill workers, brings value itself to the land that the administrative element of global production is utilizing. This value then is reflected in the rising real estate prices, the built environment serving as a sink for capital investment. In the past, land served as a bank that kept the value of capital stable. It would have to be sold or liquidated to free up the invested capital for circulation. The logic of financialized accumulation by dispossession has found a way to access this value without liquidating it, tapping it through the financialization of buildings in the form of mortgages, advancing fictitious capital on the future value of these buildings when they are sold. These mortgages are further abstracted from, lumped into investment securities whose future value serves as a driver of speculation on global markets. This value “yet to be” is tapped by a whole series of financial instruments that make this value tradable across the globe, circulating capital that does not yet exist, extracting its future realization (Sassen 2014).
87 This rise in real-estate values is connected to and somewhat dependent on a raise in rents.
The rent gap (Smith 1987) serves as a tool integrated into the service of accumulation by dispossession which seeks to tap into the wages that both the high-skilled and the low-skilled workers spend on their consumption, namely on tenancy in the buildings being gentrified.
Finance capital’s purchase of buildings on an increasingly large scale relies on the packaging of mortgages and buildings as investments, whose future value is predicated on their continuing and increasing ability to extract higher and higher levels of rent or mortgage payments.
“This highlights an unexpected conclusion: a significant part of the wealth created by America’s dynamic innovation sector accrues not just through the labor market but through the housing market. These capital gains are an important channel through which residents of innovations hubs benefit from the strength of their local economy. For renters, however, the effect of higher earnings is tempered by the increase in their monthly housing costs.” (Moretti 2013: 171)
The increase in rent levels puts the place of the low-wage service workers, thus the labor of the consumptive element itself, into a precarious situation as they are ill able to afford the increasingly valuable and expensive reproductive infrastructure they have created. Low-wage workers are thus forced into the hinterlands, mostly renters who did not benefit from the improvements they made within the gentrifying areas, in search of cheaper accommodations, making the metropolitan area of the center city an elite space.
Not only does the low-wage reproductive labor force, which relies on the high-skill labor force for a livelihood, get driven out into the underlying region in search of affordable accommodations, but this process of gentrification emanates out from the center as it plays a greater and greater role in the circuit of accumulation by dispossession, driving the tendrils of the global city out into its underlying hinterlandxiv. The increase in land prices and rents drives out not only the low-skill workers, but also the high skill workers coming to the city who cannot
88 afford to stay within it, or who are looking for new investments to make, kick starting gentrification projects and home building in the underlying region. This emanation outward is also performed by the very intermediary firms who developed the global city functions that led to the ripple effect of gentrification, who then take advantage of lower office rents and taxes offered by suburban districts outside the city center.
“Changes in the urban economy in the 1970s intersected with Los Angeles’s pre-existing spatial form to transform a low-density and flat city into a polynucleated region. The post-Fordist turn in the urban economy triggered important changes in the spatial structure of the region as activities in the most dynamic economic sectors (i.e. entertainment, technology, finance and insurance, crafts, etc.) agglomerated in different districts throughout the metropolitan region.” (Nicholls 2011: 196).
The agglomeration economies of the global city function organize themselves not just around the globe but also within the region, scattered around the centering nodes. It is the mix of both the expansion of where the higher and lower skilled workers are residing, as well as the placement of firms and work opportunities throughout the suburban region surrounding the city, that leads to the growth of poly-nucleated regions. The changes in the consumption element brought about by the changes in the administrative production element, the flexible firm, when harnessed by the logic of accumulation by dispossession, have themselves led to changes again in the production element, or at least where it chooses to reside in urban space. The intensification of the reproduction infrastructure which reproduces the global city function, when put in the service of finance capital, undermines this very reproduction. This drives the production element away from the high cost center of the reproductive infrastructure to cheaper areas which then have to be redeveloped to support the productive element, whose redeveloped infrastructure serves as another source of value to be extracted by finance capitalxv.
89 This double-use of the consumption unit in both reproducing the productive unit and as a source of value for speculation makes it harder for all the labor of the various elements to stay in the city, thereby producing the new urban crisis (Florida 2017b). In this framework, you cannot point to where production begins and reproduction ends, both becoming increasingly interrelated and diffused across fractured and fragmented space. “The same processes of capital centralization that accentuate the contradiction between production and social reproduction also enhance the gentrification process” (Smith 2002: 446). The interplay between the two logics of accumulation simultaneously reproduced by the consumption element constantly creates and dissolves new social relations of production, constantly metabolizing and transforming the elements of the social structure, the dialectic between these two logics demanding the urban social structure reconfigure itself into perpetuity with no stabilizing synthesis. It is the manner in which the labor taken up by these logics of accumulation enables and reacts to this dialectic that produces new relations of production and the spatial fixes which carry out this perpetual reconfiguration.
Section 4: The Changing Nature of Production
This section unpacks the changes in the nature of production that have occurred in the past 25 years since the original literature on the Global City and post-industrialization was written. I frame these changes within the context of the new urban crisis (Florida 2017) occurring in global cities today, the crisis being the result of the contradiction between the logics of accumulation described above. This crisis has produced a number of obstacles to continued accumulation which must be surmounted for capital to reproduce itself, which has in turn created a demand for new solutions to work around the urban crisis while at the same time reproducing
90 the regime of flexible accumulation. I argue that the solutions and fixes pursued by capital to work around the urban crisis have brought about fundamental changes in the nature of production, namely precaritization (Standing 2011, 2013, 2014a, 2014b) and the emergence of remote work. I argue that these changes in the nature of production, carried out originally by capital, open up opportunities for intervention, reaction, and agent-centric fixes to the urban crisis at the level of labor. I will talk about these changes and their effects on labor through Hardt and Negri’s (2017) concept of the digitization of labor (Brown, Lauder, & Ashton 2010;
Schumpter 2015; Hardt & Negri 2017; Huws & Leys 2013; Irani 2014), which leads to the re- appropriation of fixed capital by the multitude (Negri 1999; Hardt & Negri 2005, 2017). I will explore the speculative possibilities that have been opened up by these changes in production and remain unexplored in the sphere of social reproduction, the element of consumption. I argue that future research should continue the work of the globalizing cities literature (Brenner & Theodore
2002; Cox & Watts 2002; Hamnett 1994; Keydar 2005; Ren 2018; Robinson 2017; Roy 2009;
Shatkin 2007, 2017), specifically looking at remote work and decentralized, “off the map”
(Robinson 2017) plural urban forms as contemporary responses on the side of labor to the urban crisis which hold within them possible fixes. The pluralized relations of production formed in these responses potentially hold the possibility of transformation for the whole regime of flexible accumulation itself.
Changes in Production during The Past 25 Years
With the overgrowth of global cities ushered in by the new urban crisis, and their unlivability propagated by real estate speculation, the ability of workers to maintain residence in this urban space has become a primary challenge and concernxvi. The global city provides but one form of social reproduction which itself is harder and harder to maintain as its own dynamics
91 make it unlivable in its strangling of the reproductive service labor that makes it possible. This puts the reproduction of the productive element and its corresponding relations of production into question. The functions of the global city are thus forced to be accomplished via a divergent plurality of means. It is when the scale tips to this end of unlivability that labor flees to areas where social reproduction is gained in a variety of alternative forms at cheaper costs. This brings with it multiple changes in the methods and organization of their production and thus the relations of production they develop to accomplish it. The multiple circuits of the urban social formation that are reconfigured by these changes in production are then forced to reproduce the whole regime of flexible accumulation, i.e., both accumulation logics simultaneously, in whatever ways they can.
Under regimes of flexible accumulation, the nature of productivity and the method of accumulating capital and realizing surplus value have changed drastically. Under post- industrialism, it is the production of services and knowledge coupled with their input into the production process, and the extraction of value from social production in the form of financialized accumulation by dispossession that generates capital. The labor of this former productive unit is then to be understood as that labor which produces services and knowledge, themselves products of intellectual, affective, cognitive, emotional, and cultural labor. The means of production here do not lie in a factory space, but in people themselves. It is the primacy of this intellectual labor in directing the global production process that makes the agglomeration economies of global cities so important and valuable, the spatial monopoly these cities have over this type of labor. I argue that this monopoly over intellectual labor is actually being put into
92 question by the very dynamics set in motion by the emergence of the Global City function to begin with, namely the unbundling of the firm and the taylorization of intellectual labor.
The original break that the global city function made in the industrial regime of accumulation was the way it made it possible to find comparatively cheaper labor to meet the lower ends of its commodity chain through its ability to organize the production process globally. The ability of this function to emerge relied on the unbundling of the firm, the fact that the corporation stopped organizing and being responsible for all ends of production under its own roof, keeping only those high skill functions that maintained its bulk share of the profits from the global production chain (Blackburn 1972; Clawson 1980). This required the taylorization of manufacturing labor, its break down into contingent parts, cheapening the costs of fixed capital investment, down to the point where factories could cheaply be placed in other areas around the globe to take advantage of the much lower relative labor costs (Harrison 1994;
Henwood 1997). In keeping with Marx, it is the goal of firms to minimize their costs by decreasing the condition and wage of labor while at the same time increasing their profit and rate of exploitation through technological innovation.
This breakdown of labor, its taylorization and cheapening did not stop at the forms of unskilled manufacturing labor but has been let loose upon the high skill jobs that develop the global city function (Bell 1979; Esping-Anderson 1993; Inglehart 2016). This is happening at different rates in different cities and industries across the globe. This digitization of labor
(Brown, Lauder, & Ashton 2010; Hardt & Negri 2017; Huws & Leys 2013; Irani 2014;
Schumpter 2015) puts intellectual labor through a process similar to industrial taylorization,
93 breaking it down into its contingent pieces to improve efficiency and lower costs through increases in technological innovation. This is represented by the creation of easy to use programs, the digitization of large sectors of productive labor, and the proliferation of coding knowledge among the global population at large. The goal of the firm is to reduce down the cost of intellectual labor to its cheapest level, meaning they want more individuals to enter the field to drive wages down, as well as make most of the value of work contingent on stream-lined programs, making what any given highly skilled worker brings to the table have less value as time goes on. They accompany this taylorization with a corresponding demand of flexibility on labor (Standing 2011; Tridico 2017), breaking down assignments into short-term, and temporary contracts, only employing laborers for the piecemeal work they perform without providing full time salaries or benefits.
This opens up a global labor pool to use and integrate into the service of flexible accumulation, eroding some of the monopoly former global cities have on these functions and their corresponding laborers, producing a further fix to overaccumulation. The more that firms arrange intellectual production in this manner, the more even the highly skilled within global cities lose their grip over the privileges associated with their work. Some of these high-end functions, especially as technological innovation occurs, can be performed by the less skilled and hence be paid lower wages. Guy Standing (2011, 2013, 2014a, 2014b) describes this process as precaritizationxvii. Standing restricts the effects of this precaritization to the boundaries of national labor pools and does not see the way this precaritization flows across transnational boundaries. As these value-added sectors of corporate functioning become taylorized, they become outsourceable to other countries where the cost of intellectual labor is cheaper because
94 the corresponding network of social reproduction, of the consumption element, is less developed or integrated into the logic of accumulation by dispossession. Here I am thinking of places like
India that have developed hubs for tech and coding outsourcing for western companies, these sites of digitally taylorized labor expanding greatly in recent times (Berg et al. 2018; Friederici &
Graham 2018; Graham et al. 2017; Lehdonvirta et al. 2018; Wood et al. 2018a, 2018b; 2018c ;
World Trade Organization 2018). This arises as a spatial fix to the high costs of operation in the production element that the new urban crisis has developed through the consumption element.
With the offshoring of labor types that are interrelated with the global city function, the production element of the regime of flexible accumulation is decomposed into smaller pieces and further reconfigured. While the coding and IT work outsourced by the western core tech companies is not necessarily within the intellectual property generation sector, it comprises several areas that are closer to the top end of the commodity chain. They remain dependent on western companies for a source of work, and intellectual property, to produce the output that the global cities of the core reabsorb latter on. But at the same time, these off-shored production elements are given access to the tools, programs, and knowledge that would allow them to create their own intellectual property (Weber 2000). These networks form in order to develop a high skill labor force that can perform the same tasks as core global city labor forces, but that are cheaper due to their geographic location and social reproductive networks that have not been as integrated into the logic of accumulation by dispossession as a result of not hosting this type of labor force before. Thus, taylorized and outsourced intellectual labor comes to be valued and global not only because it has created a new agglomeration economy elsewhere, but because the cost of this intellectual labor is also so much lower than in the west. These urban structures
95 formerly less integrated into the regime of flexible accumulation, at least its higher order circuits, must create this class of labor, whose class formation is going to look incredibly different from the classes that formed in the global cities par excellence. This leads to the proliferation of qualitatively different production elements and their corresponding localized urban structures, as well as for their potential utilization in the circuit of accumulation by dispossession.
From the Firm, to the Metropolis, to the Multitude
The potential for transformation of the whole regime of accumulation here lies in the way
I characterized the mechanism that leads to the emergence of any global city function, i.e., a high-skilled intellectual labor force. Unlike manufacturing labor, intellectual labor is something that exists in a more or less intangible form, or at the very least has fewer barriers to its ownership and use than say an investment in a factory and fixed capital would allow. Hardt &
Negri (2017) highlight a complementary development occurring alongside the advent of the digitization of labor, the re-appropriation of fixed capital by labor. Intellectual labor is the product not of large-scale machinery owned and operated by industrial capitalists, but a set of skills internalized within a worker that are coming to be producible on consumer-level computers that are their own property. Even the proprietary software which enables their labor is being challenged by the advent of open-source technology, tools and programs. The scale of intellectual labor, as compared to that of industrial labor, operates more and more on the micro- level. They see this re-appropriation of fixed capital by the multitude as providing the basis for the emergence of producers free to organize their own production among themselves, determining their own relations of production. Finance capital is merely there to extract the value they create on the terrain of truly socialized production.
96
With the outsourcing of intellectual labor to the semi-periphery, including the licensing of programs, requisite coding, and intellectual knowledge necessary to perform the secondary servicing these new production elements perform for core countries, these high skilled laborers are also given the tools to create their own technology and intellectual property. “[W]hile technological change has been used as a tool to degrade work and disempower workers, the current trajectory of technology also has subversive possibilities: the capacity for widespread, instantaneous, and costless sharing of ideas, and expanded means of de-centralized production”
(Evans & Tilly 2015: 6). Here is the centering of high-skilled labor with the intent of using the tools and expertise gained through servicing western flows of knowledge to create their own intellectual products and market rents that would allow them to gain the top position in their own global commodity chain, thereby developing their own global city function, and thereby transforming the whole global organization of production. It is Hardt and Negri’s notion of the re-appropriation of fixed capital that takes us out of the space of the factory as the site of production organizing the urban system, to the whole space of the metropolis itself, the lifeworld of the multitude (Hardt & Negri 2005, 2017).
The importance in the shift of accumulation from corporate to finance capital has only intensified in the past 25 years, the demands and strategies of the logic of accumulation by dispossession growing in dominance and primacy. Hardt and Negri, as well David Harvey, have outlined how capital has financialized, the shareholders now separate from multinational corporations, constituting a pool of floating capital that has (de)territorialized. This
(de)territorialized capital seeks the rapid increase in its circulation by looking at the world as a
97 terrain of social production, of the commons replete with untapped value, that can be extracted at a whim when approached with financial instruments. In so doing, capital has also retreated in its role as an organizer of the relations of production. In previous stages, capital in its corporate form organized every end of the labor process within tightly controlled factories, but in each subsequent historical epoch gave up the primary responsibility for this organization to other functionaries. Under Fordism, organizing the relations of production was divested by capitalists and given over to managers and administrators in the corporation. Under post-industrialism, these management and administrative functions organizing the production process were given to flexible contracting firms.
It is this administrative function taking root in different productive elements which is undergoing change as the levels of productive forces change and accelerate. Capital only cares that the productive forces have revolutionized, which should theoretically increase their exploitation of surplus value, and do not care how production is reorganized in line with these changes as long as they see the creation of further value. This coincides with how the digitization of production, and the re-appropriation of fixed capital by the multitude, has changed the basis on which the relations of production are organized and reproduced. If the multitude has taken over responsibility from the small flexible contracting firms, and individually become these firms themselves, then it is by their very actions of linking with and organizing their own production process that they come to organize the relations of production, and thus hold the power in terms of how they are reproduced. I hypothesize that under regimes of flexible accumulation, in distinction to industrial regimes centered around mass consumption, that administration has begun to be outsourced by capital, and even more increasingly from the small flexible firm, to the multitude itself. Thus, it is the manner in which the multitude reproduces
98 itself as both fixed and variable capital, as reunified means of production and labor power, that affects how and in what direction the relations of production, and hence the whole regime of accumulation is reproduced. The spatial fix to the causes of the urban crisis lies in the way the multiplicity reacts to it, namely in the ways it chooses to organize itself around the globe
(Dinerstein et al. 2018; Merkel 2018).
The Emergence of the Digital Nomad
These vast changes in the nature of labor find their own (de)territorialization occurring with the introduction of remote work, or work done from a computer theoretically performable anywhere. This ability has been ushered in by the advance of technological innovation and is experiencing an expansion in scope and utilization in the form of the platform economy (Berg et al. 2018; Friederici & Graham 2018; Graham et al. 2017; Lehdonvirta et al. 2018; Wood et al.
2018a, 2018b; 2018c; World Trade Organization 2018). Remote work allows the location of producers to become separable from the location of firms. It is in this slippage that I see the relationship between productive and reproductive networks taking on a variety of different forms and impacts, constituting a promising area for future research. Beforehand, it was the firm and capital that was able to relocate anywhere, the high-skilled worker left with very little option but to follow firms wherever they went, their labor needing to be performed in the location or built environment of the firm. However, with the advent of remote work, work done with a computer from anywhere with an internet connection, labor can theoretically be performed anywhere. The question remains, if work can be performed anywhere, where will people choose to live? How much choice do they have? What barriers and historical a priori exist which influence what places come to matter and which do not? Does this development constitute a way out of the
99 urban crisis? Can labor on an agentic level provide a fix to the urban crisis through their choice of residence?
The remote worker in their fully idealized form is location independent, a digital nomad
(D’Andrea 2007; Hindman 2007; Woldoff & Litchfield 2021), for the first time breaking with the organization of life and reproduction imposed upon them by the location of the firm. How do the needs, desires, and tastes of this high-skilled group of laborers come to direct these location independent workers to specific locations? Does this group represent a class, a class fragment, a consumption group? If they are a class, then how is their consciousness formed, what culture and habitus do they produce, and what metrics guide the pursuit of their life chances across vast geographic space? I hypothesize that this group, and those who enter the horizon of remote work in its varying forms, will attempt to move to areas where their reproductive needs are best met, areas that can lie outside the choked (re)productive urban structure of the global city. Looking at the creative class literature, it is clear that these types of workers seek out certain forms and models of social reproduction over others and have internalized notions of entrepreneurialism originally in the hands of the firm and the city as growth machine. They too are looking for environments where they can realize low barriers to entry, agglomeration of similar talented peers, and comparative advantage in the cost of living, all things corporations used to look for.
When these workers are then able to work digitally and remotely, they can organize themselves all around the globe, in cheaper areas that provide the difference of postmodern cultural products
(Harvey 1992) and forms of social reproduction that have been unleashed under the reign of flexible accumulation.
100 Remote workers are also theoretically capable of working with anyone they choose to, no matter how geographically distant, which allows them to create their own projects and products, their own intellectual property that they can then lease out or sell to firms directly. Their movement, where they choose to go, potentially presents itself as a political action, as an agentic choice that can have ripple effects on the structures they flow through (Cresswell 2010). It allows for a separation between labor and capital, giving immaterial workers the ability produce a creative commons (Evans & Tilly 2015), a zone of exception and agency outside the auspices and control of capital, creating the basis for a post-capitalist politics (Gibson-Graham 2006) and providing a blue print for the convergence of the multitude (Negri 1999; Hardt & Negri 2005,
2017). “[T]hese new possibilities undermine capital’s power and legitimacy and have the potential to support a modernized Owenite vision of collaborative ‘peer production’” (Evans &
Tilly 2015: 6). Within the zone of possibility opened up by remote work lies promise for the ability of semi-peripheral and peripheral areas to capture global flows, to capture mobile high- skilled laborers who want different lifestyles and lower costs of living through the pluralized social reproductive apparatuses offered up by the semi-periphery. Who knows what the contact effects of such movements can produce. Pushed further, remote work brings with it the possibility of significant challenge and exception, an outside to the flat world that has been presented. Who knows if its promise will pan out or merely recreate new structures of domination led by capital, but the space opened up by these developments glimmers with possibility and presents itself as a space that needs to be explored further. But here, the real turn is to the producers of the multitude and the ways they organize their own social (re)production, with finance capital merely trying to follow them around the globe and extract their value where they can.
101
The question here that moves to the fore is how are the productive singularities of the multitude autonomously organizing themselves in ways that were not possible beforehand, and how is this happening in line with the re-appropriation of fixed capital? It is this terrain of experimentation and proliferation in the newly emerging forms and relationships of socialized production that serves as the new stage upon which the newly dominant forms of finance capital seek to extract new value and capital, and thus that the relationship between production and reproduction undergoes an unalterable slippage that demands investigation. How are these new changes in the productive/administrative apparatus resulting in the changing configuration of the other elements of urban social structures everywhere, from the center of the global city to the most remote socio-spatial formation you can find? How are these changes influencing the dynamics of the new urban crisis? Are they creating potential outsides to the contradictory dynamics of accumulation, a fix to the problem? Or are they merely the extension of the new urban crisis across the face of the globe, a capital displacement which brings the whole globe under the real subsumption of financialized accumulation by dispossession? The next chapter will begin to explore these questions, charting the locations that digital nomad mobility is coming to touch and site itself within. The social network model developed in the next chapter will demonstrate how labor is continuing to be drawn to global cities by their position within global urban networks of production but also beginning to be drawn away from them to new
“offbeat” locales of a qualitatively different kind. The rest of this dissertation will be spent looking at the subjective conditions and frames by which digital nomad mobility is directed towards and away from the global city, investigating the terrain upon which the outcomes of urban prospecting, and the subjectivities that guide and are created by them, are being formed
102 and contested. The contemporary urban question has only just begun to be asked, the current historical attempts at, and experiments in, resolving this contradiction provide a path to an answer.
103
New Circuits of Mobility
104 Chapter 2
Digital Nomad Cities: Beyond the Global City and Towards a Restructuring of the Agglomeration Economy
Introduction
Saskia Sassen (2001, 2005, 2016) identified the unbundling, re-siting, and reorganization of production and consumption on a global scale as the central dynamic leading to the construct of the Global City. The relationship between production and consumption in the global city is anything but fixed and finds itself in constant fluctuation as production and consumption unbundle and rebundle continually and in different directions, coming to service different global flows of production and aid in capital accumulation in differing and often contradictory ways. In the preceding chapter, I argued that the new urban crisis facing cities globally can be read as resulting from the contradictions in the way the consumptive element of the global city is connected to different circuits of production and capital accumulation, producing the crisis as we know it; however, this theoretical analysis was carried out at the level of grand and general theory, investigating how the totalizing regimes of accumulation are reproduced on the scale of global capitalism without looking necessarily at specific and particular global city functions and relationships between production and consumption that are being stitched together in the case of each specific function, and in particular locales.
In this chapter, I will be paying attention to one particular global city function, that of digital nomad mobility, that exemplifies the continued changing relationship between production and consumption in the global city and points to an emerging trend in their continued restructuring. I contend the growth of this particular global city function can present serious repercussions for
105 both the theoretical and empirical construct of the global city, both altering it as well as producing new constructs that will alter the role of the global city in broad urban networks of production. The movements of labor opened up by the emergence of remote work, against the backdrop of the new urban crisis, can be approached as the latest wave of expansion in the global city processes of deconcentration and centralization that Sassen identified 25 years ago. The economic agglomerations of the global city, and their attendant workforces, are continuing to grow while also spreading and expanding to other sites beyond primarily global cities down the hierarchies of broader global urban networks of production.
Certain global city functions continue to rely on the social form and blue-print of global city agglomeration economies, while others are beginning to uncouple from their strict infrastructural requirements, becoming site-able and performable in an increasing variety of places. Digital nomad mobility as a global city function is one such function, one that still thrives within the socio-spatial formation of the global city, while at the same time is becoming uniquely capable of being sited elsewhere. In this chapter, I will argue that this particular global city function is unique in revealing emergent and divergent trends in the continued restructuring of globalized production. These movements of labor are essential for reproducing the existing urban relations of production but also open up the possibility of alternative states of affairs. This argument hinges on approaching digital nomads and remote workers as a productive unit and seeing them as a new scale upon which production is being organized, moving from the multinational corporation of the modernist city, to the flexible firm of the global city’s agglomeration economy, to the digital nomad of off-the-map cities. As the next stage in the scaling of
106 production, I argue that digital nomads can be approached as a key figure contributing to the continued restructuring of the agglomeration economies of the global city.
Before I dive into the global city function of digital nomads and remote workers, I will first define what a global city function is and how, when operationalized in various studies of the global city, production and consumption are given different agency in relation to one another depending on how they are connected to the motors of global city restructuring: capital and labor mobility. I will then approach and frame how to study digital nomad mobility as a global city function and touch theoretically and methodologically on how it can speak to the changing nature of production and consumption happening in cities today. I will then present and analyze the findings of a social network model of digital nomad mobility to ascertain what cities are being connected through the movements of this population. I will identify the key cities serving as both landing and exit points for this population and reveal what new urban networks and regions are being formed by their flight. The findings reveal that global cities remain powerful actors as centers of digital nomad mobility, but there are a substantial number of off-the-map cities, cities that fall off any global city index, that are serving as key destinations of residence for this population. I will then explore the potential implications these mobility patterns could have on international relations of production and close by positing that the restructuring of the agglomeration economy represented by the mobility of this population speaks to multiple spatial fixes being pursued in response to the new urban crisis requiring a better understanding of the particular and varied digital nomad subjectivities producing these fixes.
107 The Global City as a Site of Production and Consumption
Since Sassen was the first to give both name and identity to global cities, as a concept and as a phenomenon, we will start with how she defined and characterized global cities, namely as sites of production. As mentioned above, Sassen sees the global city as emerging from the simultaneous dispersal and concentration of global production resulting from capital mobility and advances in communications technologies. Harvey (1992, 2004, 2005), another theorist and analyst of the global restructuring of production, pegs this round of capital mobility to capital’s need to pursue spatial fixes to crises of overaccumulation. This spatial fix sought to deterritorialize capital from locales of high labor cost and increasingly low returns on investment to new markets and locales with low labor costs and the need for capital intensive development, and thus high returns on investment. While manufacturing, what is normally thought of and referred to as production, was moved from the global north to the global south (the new international division of labor), the command and control functions of the global economy were unbundled from corporate headquarters to small flexible sub-contracting firms agglomerating in the construct of the global city. These command and control functions, and their agglomeration and concentration in place at the level of small flexible firms, are what makes a global city, the locations that become global cities chosen by where capital chooses to move in order to meet its needs. Sassen identifies these global city functions with the emergence of the sector of producer services, and the labor that produces these global city functions, namely the FIRE industries of finance, insurance and real estate but also marketing, sales, research and development, and the other sectors whose labor is necessary for making globally distributed production possible.
Sassen approaches these functions from the perspective of production, meaning she investigates how these functions are produced at the level of inputs into the global economy, looking at their
108 attendant job infrastructures and the role that place plays in producing and reproducing these functions.
Sassen’s definition of Global Cities, and its corresponding measures of identification, keep a tight focus on production, looking for the specific units and agents associated with this particular sector of production. This focus on production, however, begins to beg the question as to why these sectors of production agglomerate in the locales that they do, revealing the necessity of certain conditions and infrastructures needing to be historically present for these production units and processes to arise where they do (Abu-Lughod 1991, 1999). For Sassen, the production of these global city functions relies on a very specific type of worker, a talented highly skilled knowledge worker. This focus on this privileged form of labor demands that attention be paid to the dynamics behind the production of this labor itself, investigating how this type of labor is trained and attracted to these agglomeration economies and what relations of production and infrastructures ensure its top performance. This is where Sassen begins to take us beyond a narrow focus on production and starts to point to the elements and infrastructures of consumption and social reproduction that produce and make this high skill labor force associated with global city functions possible. Sassen argues that this new type of labor force requires a corresponding low wage service labor force to reproduce it, namely service workers building the gentrified consumptive enclaves that the high skill workers live in, performing the services both within and outside of the firm on which these workers relyxviii, as well as forming the basis for property speculation as chronicled in the last chapter. The global city then is defined by being both a productive and consumptive social form marked by the presence and interaction of high skill talent and low wage service workers, which Sassen argues produces increasing inequality
109 and polarization in the cities in question. Capital mobility precipitates and sparks a corresponding need for specific forms of labor which pulls labor to it through the global city’s centralization and monopolization of employment.
While Sassen does not quantify and operationalize these aspects of global city’s consumptive element, she hits on these same dynamics taking place in global cities when she looks at the influx of young workers coming to global cities. Clearly the influx of a certain kind of worker, the labor of the producer services sector, is central to the functioning of the global city, an aspect that Sassen treats with importance, but what draws this labor to the city? Castells
(1996, 2000) goes beyond the frame that workers come to the global city simply because that is where jobs are available and identifies another set of processes and concerns occurring alongside those dictated by the sheer centralization and monopoly of employment within the global city.
For Castells, the city also represents a highly sought-after consumptive infrastructure that workers pursue for social advancement, greater senses of self, and a foundation for their identities. The initial movement of capital may set up the pre-conditions for global-cityness, and the functions that comprise it, but its actualization relies on the corresponding movement of these two labor pools to the city, which itself is supported by attendant consumptive infrastructures.
Richard Florida (2002, 2003) in his work on the creative class picks up on this insight brought to light by Abu-Lughod and Castells, seeing the labor force of the global city and identifying them as the creative class, contending that cities need to attract this class for their economic and long term survival. For Florida, the labor force leads to agglomeration economies and global city functions, and if a city can capture it through the consumptive infrastructures it
110 offers to entice them, global city functions can be created after the factxix. He argues that the mobility of labor can precede and precipitate the mobility of capital rather than always following and depending on it. Labor is drawn by different enticements than capital is, by forms of consumption, livelihood, and styles of life that expand it and fill it with meaning, that directly support the forms of subjectivity required to carry out the labor of producer services under post- modern symbolic/informational regimes of production (Harvey 1992). Cities enter into competition for this labor, winning and losing depending on how they speak to and support the needs and desires of labor. Florida, in his own way, argues for and begins to show the power and importance of labor mobility to the formation of global city functions. His work on the creative class provides an avenue for beginning to connect the processes of production and consumption more extensively in a way that takes the subjectivity of labor seriously. However, his tight focus on urban governance and the role of cities intervening in this process reifies the needs and desires of labor into a matter of public policy steeped in metrification which obscures the living breathing dynamics underlying labor mobility itself.
By looking at digital nomad mobility, I seek to investigate and unpack the subjective dynamics of the mobility of labor that make sense of how and why it chooses to locate where it does, considered both separately from and in interaction with factors of the global city determined by the mobility of capital. The global city, and its continual processes of formation leading to today’s round of restructuring, tells the story of capital mobility and labor mobility responding to each other. I will argue that this latest round of restructuring is a result of workers simultaneously attempting to access increasingly inaccessible global cities while also running up against the physical and social constraints to expansion that labor faces within these very cities,
111 when the infrastructures of global cities cease to meet their needs and put the past movements of labor into question, forcing workers to leave. I argue that the increased polarization and inequality felt with increasing intensity within global cities is pushing forward a new wave of labor mobility captured by the digital nomad global city function.
This labor mobility has two main trajectories, comprised of movement to the global city and movement away from it. Those who are first able to leave are the highly skilled that can take their work with them, the remote worker constituting a new position in the labor market that is able to connect and disconnect from the city in novel and unprecedented ways. While remote work may not be the central feature of the contemporary economy, it is a growing sector digitizing and deterritorializing large swaths of employment from low-skill click work to the producer service labor that makes up the global city. Movements of labor put into play by transitions to remote work are signaling the possibility of a larger and more dramatic shift in geographies of work and residence, perhaps a spatial fix on behalf of labor to the new urban crisis, itself the result of the spatial fix of capital that created the terms of the global city. In order to investigate and test this broad hypothesis requires that this potential spatial fix of labor be approached on the same level that the spatial fix of capital was: as a new global city function, one that knits together the elements of the socio-spatial formation in ways that reproduce and contest it.
Digital Nomad Mobility as an Emerging Global City Function
The productive unit of the producer services firm, and thus of the agglomeration economy, has undergone a change over the past 25 years due both to technological innovation
112 which has allowed for the digitization of traditional jobs but also in response to increased polarization in the consumptive element of the city. The flexible firm can now leverage digitization and remote work to unbundle more traditional jobs into discrete tasks. Tasks typically performed by skilled workers (qua Sassen) within the boundaries of a firm are now being subcontracted out to cheaper labor in individualized chunks, creating a global precarious and alienated workforce at a scale never seen before. While a portion of Sassen’s skilled workers retain some kind of secure critical mass within these flexible firms, others are experiencing a drastic de-skilling and precaritization. This puts these workers in-between the firm and temporary sub-contracting jobs. This puts pressure on producer services firms to compete against cheaper labor from flexible firms abroad, as well as on individual workers to grab onto their own work contracts outside of the firm against others in a global labor market (Graham & Anwar
2019). Firm competition has also become individual worker competition and plays out on a new scale which impacts and is affected by competition at the level of the firm.
These tertiary workers forming a new layer and outgrowth of producer services firms have their own specificity and way of connecting to local infrastructures in ways that are both similar and divergent from the ways producer service firms and their workers did in the past.
They inherit the past iterations of the global city and are left to make new connections to it on a continually shifting terrain. The position of these agents in the labor process has changed, and thus their position in relation to the other social relations which undergird their labor process.
Taking the individualization of the producer services firm worker to its farthest extreme, the individual remote sub-contracting worker, or digital nomad, can operate completely outside the space and organizational structure of the firm. With the digital nomad, the scale at which labor is
113 carried out and organized, and hence the terms upon which connections between the worker and the city are made, have proliferated in the form and number. Cities no longer need to offer the same macro-infrastructures to entice whole firms to their territory, but infrastructures on a micro- level, appealing to individual workers servicing components of various global city functions in and across different sectors. This rescaling and individualization of the productive actor and unit causes a cascading expansion in the number and type of actors who decide at what level infrastructures are chosen in support of the labor process. This re-scaling of agency, from flexible firm to the digital nomad, and all productive unit elements between them, makes the shifts in the location and actualization of global city functions, and the re-bundling of consumption and production along new lines, both possible and inevitable.
As the dispersion of subject positions expands with the individualization of productive units, the subject position of the flexible firm comes to, in increasing instances, become separate and opposed to that of its other logical extreme, the digital nomad. Each subject position, and those that stand between them, can enter into different types of social relations in both the same and different locations. The social relation between these two terms, between worker and firm, is in flux and needs to be articulated and established alongside other social relations in the global city. In some circumstances, the subject position of the firm and of the worker will be indistinguishable, and in others they will be far apart and antagonistic. The relation between flexible firm and worker both impacts, and itself is shaped by, the other social relations that each has with different localities, or to go back to Castells (1977), the other elements comprising the urban social formation, like consumption, exchange, and administration. Digital nomads as a figure tie together production and consumption, not on the level of small flexibilized firms
114 making up agglomeration economies, but on the level of individualized workers. Florida’s
Creative Class (2003) thesis picks up on the differentiation of these dynamics, showing an initial split between the interests and desires of the firm and that of the creative class, between firm and producer services workers, but in the end flattens the them back into one agent. Florida’s logic was that workers bring firms and vice versa meaning that workers ultimately have to work within the confines of the firm, which organizes the labor process and seeks out certain conditions and infrastructures to actualize and support the labor process in a specific direction.
With digital nomads, who have an increased ability to eek out an existence outside the organizational structure of the firm, the interests of the firm and the worker come back into a more sustained divergence, both out of choice and necessity. If workers can choose how to set up their work life they will do so differently than they would inside the confines of the producer service firm’s office, adding particularity to their own labor process coinciding with their own lifestyle choices. This choice, however, also becomes a necessity, something this population of workers is forced to do since the firm no longer pays for office space or directly organizes and manages their labor process, deferring the costs of production and management, foisting the selection of the infrastructures chosen to undergird the labor process on to the worker. This change in the scale of actor changes the interpretations and impacts of what is viewed as production and consumption, or rather how production is reproduced and at what scale. The relationship changes because the scale and actor changes. Firms do not grab work, workers do.
From this perspective, we can then approach digital nomads, and their mobility and settlement patterns, as a global city function and organizing flow of production in its own right. Approached in this way, their needs and desires come to direct and bracket where they come to invest their
115 mobility, and thus hold the key to understanding this wave of labor mobility writ large. In the rest of this chapter, I will be investigating the global city function of digital nomad mobility both for its novelty in forming qualitatively different forms of connections between workers and cities than those that came before but also as entering into relation with these other types of flows and connections, converging and diverging with them.
Methods and Description of the Dataset
I will compare the global city function of digital nomad mobility with the functions and infrastructures identified by other traditional global city measures to begin to look at how digital nomads relate to existing global city convergences, how they diverge, and how the subject positions between the firm and digital nomad both agglomerate and fragment under particular conditions and circumstances. In order to perform this operation and analysis, I need to create measures similar to other existing global city measures to track and chart digital nomad mobility and global city function convergences. To guide the formation of my measures, and provide myself with a basis for comparison between my digital nomad global city function and other global city functions, I will be utilizing three different global city indexes: AT Kearney’s Urban
Elite Global City Index, the Institute for Urban Strategies’ Global Power City Index (GPCI) and the Global and World Cities Research Network’s (GaWC) Global City Classifications. While the
Kearney and GPCI indexes measure individual city-attributes, measuring infrastructures that support global city functions in various sectors, with the GPCI measuring their subjective appeal to different global urban actors (artist, manager, researcher, resident, visitor),the GaWC classifications are relational and network-based, studying interconnections between cities based on specific global city functions. The Kearney and GPCI indexes look at the presence of global
116 city infrastructure to identify the potential for global cityness, whereas the GaWC’s network- based approach looks only at where real and particular global city functions emerge and actualize the potential of different global city identified infrastructures.
Together, these measures capture the different infrastructural, productive, and consumptive elements that undergird global city functions, and any measure that I come up with for identifying digital nomad mobility as a global city function should attempt to do the same. To this end, I produced a digital nomad mobility network dataset tracking the movements of self- professed digital nomads as they take trips between cities globally. The social network dataset was created by compiling data from nomadlist.com, a social networking site for digital nomads where users chart their travel between cities. This dataset is relational and attempts to find urban networks along the same lines that Sassen and GaWC look for social relations of competition and cooperation between cities. I will use this dataset to create a social network model to identify where digital nomad convergences and relations are being formed, between what cities, and in what regions, and then compare these measures of digital nomad presence to preceding global city rankings and measures. By treating Digital Nomads as an emerging Global City function, I will reveal how they straddle the lines between production and consumption, and therefore demonstrate how the unbundling between these terms is playing out as identified in the theory chapter.
Nomad List – The Basis for the Geographic Urban Network Model
Nomadlist.com is a social networking site for Digital Nomads. This website accumulates data on a host of cities around the world that Digital Nomads go to and are interested in
117 travelling to. The site has city-specific pages where individual city-level metricsxx are kept for each city, allowing users to make comparisons between cities in these networks, check out cities of interest for their habitability, connect with other users in these cities, look at “hoodmaps”
(user generated maps identifying hipster, rich, tourist, and normie neighborhoods and areas of the city) to determine where in the city to go, and a host of other city specific information meant to help digital nomads decide what cities to travel to and how to best connect to the cities in question. Each of these city pages also contained text data at the bottom of each page denoting where people went after they went to the city in question, in the form of “People traveling from
Chiang Mai to Bangkok (108)”. This text data was an artifact produced by site-users adding the trips they had taken on their individual site profiles capturing in aggregate the number of trips users took between the city in question and every other city on the sitexxi, providing a macro view of user mobility between cities globally. The very form of this text data, “People traveling from Chiang Mai to Bangkok (108)”, presents itself as directed edge list in waiting, providing a source city, a target city, and an edge weight capturing the number of trips for each directed edge, constituting the raw material for a social network model of digital nomad cities.
This text data from each city page serves as the basis for the following social network model which looks at where digital nomads are choosing to invest their mobility. I scraped this text data for all the participating cities on Nomad List at the time of the study, the week of
December 17th, 2017, and used regular expressions to parse the text, pulling out the first city name as the source, the second as the target, and the number as the directed edge-weight. I then had an edge list yielding an unfiltered network graph showing a total of 9,731 connections, or trip routes, between 737 cities. I then geocoded each of these cities present in the dataset, which
118 allowed me to 119eoreferenced and map my social network model, allowing me to add a spatial and topological component to the following analyses and produce the visualizations and findings explored and analyzed later in this chapter. I will attempt to use this social network model to infer how the mobility of this population both follows and diverges from other already recorded and overlapping economic and urban phenomena. I will parse out whether the dynamics of digital nomad mobility revealed in the urban network model speaks to the expansion in the forms of agglomeration and centralization consistent with the dynamics of global city, or whether they instead reveal the emergence of new and novel forms of agglomeration and settlement that differ and react to the inherited forms of the global city.
Background on Nomad List – Data Potentials and Limitations
The data from the social network model captures trips logged by users between cities globally, at the aggregate level of cities. This data will be useful for ascertaining where users of nomad list are travelling to, and essentially where the hubs of digital nomad activity are emerging and centralizing globally. However, what is known about the users of this site and the site itself can help guide the conclusions that I will draw from this user data. How do the parameters and ecosystem of the site, and the background assumptions that I make about this population of users on the site, allow discussion of digital nomads more broadly, and what limitations do they provide for the conclusions I can draw from the social network model? I will begin to tease out the potentials and limitations of this dataset by a) describing the history and purpose of the site itself, b) providing general numbers on site circulation, user numbers, and trips over time, and c) elaborating the ideal user assumptions I can draw from the site and how
119 these assumptions and numbers both connect to the data I have collected as well as to digital nomads as a greater trend framing the conclusions I can draw from it.
A General Overview of Nomad List
Nomad List was started in July 2014xxii by Pieter Levels, who was “traveling as a digital nomad in SE Asia and…had seen Chiang Mai, Bali and Bangkok but…was wondering what more places would be suitable for nomads like [himself]. [He] knew [he] needed fast internet, nice weather and low cost of living. So [he] made a spreadsheet, shared it on Twitter and people helped fill it in. That became the basis for this site.” (Levels 2021). This crowd-sourced spreadsheet was then released on Product Hunt where it blew up and drew in thousands of new users and even more page visits. Since then, “Nomad List and its affiliated sites get about
100,000-500,000 unique users per month with 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 pageviews depending on each month.” In order to get an idea of site usage, circulation, and the underlying community who uses the site, I want to look at the site’s total number of users, the total page views, and the total number of trips taken and logged by users up to the time of data collectionxxiii. I will use these numbers to infer broader information about the digital nomad community and its mobility from the trip data that serves as the basis of this chapter’s social network model, and thus its subsequent modelling of the global city function of digital nomad mobility. At the point of data collection, Nomad List had seen a grand total of 2,044,659 users, resulting in 29,563,609 page viewsxxiv. From these numbers on site users and page views, I would argue that Nomad List gets a substantial amount of circulation, that the population that uses it denotes a growing population of loosely defined digital nomads, or at the very least people who are interested in the same information about cities globally as digital nomads. There seems to be growing interest in the
120 lifestyle of the digital nomad and the information and infrastructures necessary to make this lifestyle possible.
While this population is large and growing, with over 2 million total users at the time of data collection, it is also heterogenous in its use of Nomad List, with differing levels of activity which impacts what data is captured on the website. Many of the features and functionality of
Nomad List is restricted to users who are willing to pay a subscription fee to the website, including forums, chat, individual profiles, and most importantly for the purposes of this study: the ability to track your trips. While there was a total of 2,044,659 users utilizing nomads list up to the time of data collection, the website had only a total of 9,154 total customers paying for a subscription. This limits and frames the conditions under which I can approach and interpret the data, approaching the trips between cities forming the basis for the following social network model as the product of 9,154 paying customers, as opposed to the amorphous 2,044,659 users who visit and interact with the site.
While this large discrepancy between paying data-producing users and visiting users limits the conclusions that can be drawn from the data, it also provides an insight into the broader user community of this website, and potentially into the larger population of digital nomads. The data-generating customers seem to provide the bulk of the data and information at the individual user level on the site which is then consumed by the millions of non-paying users, shaping their understanding of digital nomads as a subject, looking at the cities these more active users go to, listening to their ratings of cities, reading their forum posts and discussions about the lifestyle, etc. This discrepancy seems to hint at a larger possible dynamic present in this population as a
121 whole, revealing a more active minority of users who actively live and shape this lifestyle which is then consumed as a product by other people who are digital nomads, dabble in remote work, or who simply dream about becoming a digital nomad and are looking for inspiration, advice, and guidance in how to pursue the lifestyle and the different possibilities in life and place that it makes possible. This core of active data generating users acts as a group of influencers, those who are successful at being digital nomads, and whose activity, comments, and advice is to be trusted and viewed by others as an example to follow.
This user dynamic between these core influencers and the mass of consumers who learn and actively engage with what these influencers produce on the site has implications for my social network model and how I analyze the trips taken by this core group of influencers. On the website, digital nomads can track and chart their past and future travel between these cities on their individual profiles which is supposed to help them see who is going to be there the same time as them and allow them to chart where they have been and where they are going to. In order to track your trips on Nomad List, you have to pay for a subscription, which then narrows down the amount of people contributing to the trip total figure to paying customers, a figure that is different than total users, the discrepancy noted above. Nomad List also tracks the number of trips taken by this core group of influencer users showing a total of 40,376 trips logged on the sitexxv.
The available data tracks trips taken by users at the aggregate and general level and does not tell us where the trips were originating, who was doing the travelling, and where they were travelling to. The trips of this minority group of 9,154 users is tracked mainly on the level of their individual profiles, but if you go to city specific pages, this measure is aggregated and
122 tracked on the bottom of the page as a text artifact in the form of “People traveling from Chiang
Mai to Bangkok (108)”. This is why I decided to use this text data at the bottom of each city page tracking travel to a given city and beyond as the basis for my social network dataset, using it as a proxy for the trip data measured in aggregate in the number of trips taken metric.
Using the place specific text data on trips at the bottom of the city pages yielded a sample of 22,391 trips, a little more than half (55.5%) of the 40,376 trips actually logged on Nomad List at this point. While not representing all of the trips logged on Nomad List, this proxy data does provide a robust sample to begin looking for patterns in digital nomad mobility, settlement, and agglomeration. In order to tease out the city and regional level effects of these trip movements, the way that digital nomads connect cities through their movement, I proceeded to geo-reference and map this network producing the visualizations that are to follow. My dataset comprises an undifferentiated mass of 22,391 trips made by a possible 9,154 paying and data-creating users.
This dataset can begin to shed light on the broader dynamics of the 10 to 100 million already existing digital nomads currently active in the world (Levels 2021, MBO Partners 2018,
2019)xxvi, and the millions of aspirants aiming to enter the field of digital nomad-hood (MBO
Partners 2018, Mann & Adkins 2017)xxvii. The movements of this seemingly niche population of
Nomad List users contain within them signs of big changes to come.
What is a Digital Nomad? – Ideal User Assumptions
From the above general overview of Nomad List, I have provided an idea of the quantitative number of visitors to the site, how many users there are, how many of these users contribute to the actual production of the data used in the social network model, and the discrepancies between the total number of trips logged on the site versus the number present in
123 the dataset serving as the basis for the social network model. What is known about the users themselves? Who is the average or ideal user of Nomad List, both as an active contributing user of the site as well as a visitor and consumer of the site? To answer these questions, I will need to posit a set of assumptions about this ideal user, and frame how these assumptions both guide and limit the analyses and conclusions I can draw from the social network model. The first question I can ask is what exactly is a digital nomad? How is this defined by the site itself, and how can this definition prefigure who interacts with this site and how?
The founder of the site, Pieter Levels, defines a digital nomad broadly: “Digital nomads, or remote working travelers, are people who live at least part of the year away from their home country while working remotely as an employee for their employer, as a contractor for companies or if they have their own business for themselves.” (Levels 2021). This broad definition can include a large swath of users, and is itself still only partial; however, it provides a starting point for beginning to understand who may be using the site and creating the data I will be analyzing. Levels’ definition of a digital nomad is largely constituted around being abroad for a portion of the year, away from your home country, and working remotely in a few different fashions. A digital nomad, from this base, then is defined by both their mobility but also by their connection to remote work, the manner in which they are connected to production forming the basis for differences in digital nomad experiences. This definition, though broad, is also quite strict at the same time, qualifying only remote workers who travel internationally, setting a standard that many remote workers are probably not able to achieve, either staying in place or only travelling domestically, while at the same time dismissing those who travel abroad and work as they travel but not remotely, or who travel for work. In keeping with the above
124 discussion of the difference between core influencer digital nomads on Nomad List versus the more populous visitors to the site, this strict definition most likely captures the former group.
This core group of influencers are the exemplars of digital nomadhood, abiding by and identified with this strict definition, whereas the other populous group of visitors most likely straddle the boundaries of this definition, differing on the axes of mobility and employment.
This strict definition also emerges from the outside, a definition used to select, denote and identify members of a population, whereas the term “Digital Nomad” has been take up subjectively as a moniker and source of identity evoked by a heterogenous population. Users on the site then will both abide by and depart from the strict definition of digital nomad expounded above, though it does seem reasonable to assume that paying customers of the site are those who have higher need of its information and resources, and thereby most likely fall under the strict definition. A typology of digital nomads along these axes of mobility and employment will be elaborated on in later chapters. For now, I will assume that the ideal user of Nomad List, one of its paying customers, falls within the strict definition of digital nomads provided above; however, I can also assume that these users can and will differ along the axes of mobility and employment. I can also assume that the actions of this core group of influencers will impact and be taken up by people not falling under this definition and impact adjacent and proximate populations, and due to the subjective nature of the term “Digital Nomad” will contest and impact what a digital nomad will come to be. I must keep these assumptions in mind as I analyze the social network model of users’ trips between cities globally, that these are the types of users taking trips and logging this data on the site.
125 Another assumption I need to make explicit before I delve into the network model relates to the axis of mobility bracketing population variation. How mobile are the users on Nomad
List? How mobile are digital nomads, and how frequent are the trips they make between cities?
How does this influence how their mobility and settlement patterns between cities, regions, and nations can be read globally? The definition of the digital nomad above contends that digital nomads are defined by living part of the year away from their home country. This part of the year component is incredibly vague and general, covering everything from a one-time weekend work trip to travelling to a different location every week of the year. This latter scenario is the one evoked by the aesthetic of the digital nomad, the romantic aspects of this figure and lifestyle being its continued mobility and travel, its diversity of life experiences, that working remotely allows it to do. The question is whether this assumption is representative of most digital nomad experiences or an exceptional case that nonetheless has been taken up as an emblem of the lifestyle? In terms of representativeness, Pieter Levels has crunched the numbers and determined that
“The average time a Nomad List member stays in one location is currently 77 days or about 2.5 months [March 20, 2019]. One of the biggest misconceptions is that nomads move around every two weeks to their next spot while roaming around the world romantically. Many try to do that when they just start out and are super excited to see the world understandable. However, moving around so fast gets physically and mentally challenging quickly. Instead, most nomads stay in places for many months and will have a few favorite hubs they rotate around. That also means they can build up a somewhat stable group of friends in those spots. This duration is a natural limitation of visas. Most nomads travel on tourist visas which are limited to 30, 60 or 90 days.” (Levels 2021).
These points are bolstered by a Flexjob survey (Courtney 2020) of digital nomads which found that 73% of their respondents visited 1-2 countries a year, 19% visited 3-4 countries a year, and
8% visited more than 5 countries a year. They also found that 17% of their respondents typically
126 stayed in one location for less than one week, 22% for 1-2 weeks, 11% for 3-4 weeks, 11% for 1-
2 months, 12% for 3+ months, and 27% that took varying trips of duration.
This information points to the fact that the aesthetic assumption of constant mobility among digital nomads is not generally representative of the population as a whole. Though it may be the ideal strived for, few achieve it or attempt to beyond the first few months of trying out being a digital nomad. The pattern of movement and settlement revealed by Nomad List above demands a revision of the base assumption of their movement to include and accounts for periodic, seasonal, and regional movement. Most digital nomads likely move according to Visa restrictions and seasonal needs, for periods of 2.5 months, between a host of hubs where they have established social networks of place-based ties and connections broken up by series of exploratory and touristic based trips to other locations in-between. Moving forward with the social network model of trips taken by users, I should assume that I can begin to identify where these hubs of continued and circular mobility are being built on a larger scale and that what I am seeing is a mix of hub and touristic movement happening on a periodic basis, as opposed to resulting from continued, sporadic, spontaneous and high rate travel to dissimilar locales.
The last assumption I want to make explicit about users of the site, and thus of the conclusions about digital nomads I draw from this data, are the national origins of these digital nomads, and what type of digital nomad is represented in this data. Levels again broadly declares and qualifies one of the biggest limitations of the site which is that “Nomad List mostly has an English-speaking Western audience though, which is only 20% of the world. Then again, most of the world is probably not in a position to go work remotely and travel (yet) due to
127 differences in income.” Thus, one of the biggest limitations of my data is that it only captures the movements of English-speaking digital nomads, who are generally going to be coming from
Western countries in the global North. I need to keep this in mind when I am looking at what cities and regions are most trafficked by digital nomads on this site and use it to theorize why
Western English-speaking digital nomads would be travelling and looping between the cities they do. I can only really speak to the experiences of these English-speaking digital nomads from this data, and it is going to prefigure how I can interpret my findings, meaning I have to make connections between western labor markets, remote work experiences, and push and pull factors driving people to digital nomadhood as well as to specific locales. I can, however, assume that there are non-western nomads caught in my population of digital nomads, with English being one of the top languages spoken as a second language in the world and effectively serving as a lingua franca for entering global labour markets (Shatkin 2007) and grabbing onto a high proportion of remote work opportunities.
With my assumptions of the ideal user made explicit, I can now move onto investigating how the Nomad List trip data capturing digital nomad mobility speaks to the broader themes and arguments of this chapter, namely how are digital nomads caught up in, and in their own way responsible for, the spatial unbundling of production and consumption in cities around the globe?
How can I read this population’s movements as both a result of, and response to, these larger macro-dynamics of capitalism affecting cities amidst the urban crisis? How does the data both confirm, contradict, and build on the theoretical and literature-based points and assumptions arrived at in the preceding theory chapter?
128 Findings and Illustration of Theory
Digital Nomads use Nomad List to gather information on cities around the globe and evaluate them for future investments in mobility and habitation. Taken on a macro and generalized level, what types of cities do they actually travel to and what types of urban networks and connections result? In this section, I will describe the urban social network model developed from the Nomad List trip data and unpack the findings as they relate to the dissertation’s larger questions regarding the global unbundling of production and consumption. I will be focusing the analysis of the social network model in relation to four theoretical points enumerated in the preceding theory chapter, using the network model to illustrate these points and add descriptive specificity to how this unbundling is happening in the case of digital nomads in particular. The four anchoring theoretical foci that I will illustrate using this data are: (1) the emergence of Digital Nomad Cities as adjacent to, converging with, and diverging from Global
Cities, (2) Global and Digital Nomad Cities as exiting and landing sites, (3) the rise of new nomadic urban regionalisms, and (4) the reconfiguration of international relations of production.
I will compare the network measures and findings to the global city rankings, indexes and metrics outlined above and ask what they tell us about the types of cities this population is pursuing but also what connections between cities are being made by this population lending to the production of new urban networks. I will then end with a discussion of what these findings tell us about the unbundling of the agglomeration economy, or rather the continued restructuringling and re-siting of production and consumption occurring since the establishment of the global cities literature.
129 Description of the Digital Nomad Urban Network
Figure 1 – The Full Nomad List Trip Network, Nodes and Edges Colored by GaWC Classifications, Nodes and Edges Sized by Weighted Degree
Figure 1 above provides a visualization of the full Nomad List Trip Network, colored by
GaWC Classifications of the Cities and Edge Connections, and begins to reveal some of the forming centers of Digital Nomad Agglomeration and Settlement. Before delving into the emerging concentrations of this population in the network, and the particular relationships between cities it reveals, I would like to briefly describe the network itself, looking at node and edge statistics to frame the state of the average city in the network, its relation to other cities, and its circulation in digital nomad mobility, providing a basis from which to compare the outliers at the top end of the spectrum that stand out as Digital Nomad Cities par excellence, and diving deeper into what these outliers reveal about the continued unbundling of production and consumption. There are 737 total cities in the network model of digital nomad mobility with
9,731 unique and directed connections between them. The Network diameter, the shortest distance between the two most distant nodes in the network, is 6. The graph density is 0.018
130 which tells us the network is relatively sparse, that the actual number of connections between the cities in the network is low compared to the total number of possible connections. The modularity is 0.332, revealing that connections within groupings and communities of cities in the network is high but that there is also high interconnection between these groups, essentially meaning that the network of digital nomad cities has a degree of regionalization but that these regions are themselves fairly interconnected.
The population of digital nomad cities is made up of 737 total cities, but what does the average city look like in the network? By looking at the node statistics, I can begin to see how many cities the average city in the network is connected to and how many digital nomads the average city circulates in. To make sense of node statistics, you need to know what a degree is. A degree is the count of unique connections that any city (node) has to other cities in the network, in this case the number of other cities in the network that any city in question is sending digital nomads to or receiving them from, the total number of these inflows and outflows to other cities, but not their content. The average degree for any city in the network is 13.2, which means the average city has 13.2 connections to other cities in the network, though because this is an aggregate measure of inflow and outflow, this does not mean connections to 13.2 other unique cities but can include the same cities twice if there is both inflow and outflow between them. The average weighted degree is the average number of digital nomads flowing both in and out of the given city in question. The average weighted degree of the network is 43.6, which means that the average city circulates 43.6 digital nomads, a sum of in and out flows.
131 The node statistics provide a bit more information about the average city in the network, but what do the edge statistics say about the average relationship between these cities?
How many digital nomads travel from one city to another on average? An edge in this network is the directed connection between two cities in the network, weighted by the number of digital nomads travelling from one city to another. The average edge weight is the average number of digital nomads traveling from one city to another in the whole network per edge, which is fairly low at 2.3 digital nomads, the median edge weight being 1 which shows that network edge weights are significantly skewed to the left, with high number outliers dominating the data.
There are a small set of edges (connections between cities) making up most of the data and movement in this network. All of the above descriptive network statistics point to the fact that digital nomads are not evenly spatially distributed among cities around the globe, and that there are a smaller population of cities that these digital nomads are moving to en masse. From this basis, I will proceed to investigate and analyze what cities fall amongst these highly circulated outlier cities, comparing these digital nomad cities to global city metrics. I will begin to tease out why digital nomads are flocking to these cities in particular, and focus on the impacts their mobility is having on reshaping broader global urban networks in general.
Emerging Digital Nomad Cities and their Networks
The first question that serves as the focusing prism through which I begin to investigate and analyze my network, and first posed in the preceding theory chapter, is “If work can be performed from anywhere, where will people choose to live?” To answer this question, I will look at the outlier cities in the network, those cities at the top end of the digital nomad mobility spectrum, in order to chart the emergence of Digital Nomad Cities, or those cities attracting the
132 most digital nomad circulation. I then want to explore the relationships these Digital Nomad
Cities have to Global Cities in general and see where global city-hood is connected to high digital nomad circulation and where it is not, arguing that the global city function of digital nomad mobility can simultaneously converge with and diverge from other global city functions.
Thus, Digital Nomad Cities can both be, and not be, Global cities, with Digital Nomad Cities par excellence being those cities that experience high circulation in digital nomads without also holding other global city attributes and relationships. By illustrating these convergences and divergences of digital nomad mobility with global city-hood, I aim to justify the theoretical claim that the ends of capital accumulation represented by the figure and labor of digital nomads, as elaborated on in the preceding chapter, are being accomplished by a plurality of socio-spatial formations. To this end, I will start by looking at the most highly circulated digital nomad cities in the network.
Figure 2 below is a scatter plot of digital nomad cities by degree and weighted degree, colored by their GaWC classification and sized by weighted degree, which can be interpreted as the number of digital nomad trips each city is caught up in, a measure of its total level of digital nomad circulation.
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Figure 2 reveals there is a positive correlation between degree and weighted degree, or to put it another way, between the number of edge connections a city has to other cities and the number of digital nomads the city circulates. There are a high proportion of GaWC Alpha classed cities among the Top Digital Nomad Cities, but also a fair amount of Beta and Gamma classed cities in addition to cities that do not even appear in the GaWC Classifications. Out of the total 737
Digital Nomad Cities in the network, 418 (57%) of them do not appear in the GaWC
Classifications, with less than 7% of the 319 cities that do being classified as GaWC Alpha
134 cities. This small proportion of Alpha cities account for roughly 43% of digital nomad trips in the whole network while the 418 cities not accounted for in the GaWC Classifications account for 22.54% of total digital nomad trips in the network. Alpha cities (Global Cities par excellence) circulate highly in digital nomads, but there are also a substantial number of non-global cities, cities not in the GaWC Classifications, that circulate in the next highest proportion of digital nomads. Digital Nomads seem to both be flocking to Global Cities while at the same time leaving them.
Table 1 (below) shows the list of the Top 30 Cities in the network ranked by total edge weight which can be understand as sum total of digital nomad flows coming in and out of the city in question. These top 30 cities, 4.1% of the city nodes in the network, contribute 40.3% of the network’s total circulation of digital nomads, revealing an emerging hierarchy and privileging of some cities in attracting in this population over others. This table compares each of these 30 cities and their Digital Nomad Ranking with three other global city classifications and rankings (The GaWC, GPCI, and Kearney Indexesxxviii) to begin to see where these top 30 cities align with other global city processes and functions and where they diverge.
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Of these Top 30 Digital Nomad Cities, most can be found within three regions: North America,
Western Europe, and Southeast Asia. Looking at the GaWC classifications, it seems a large proportion of these cities are classified by GaWC as Alpha Cities (20 out of 30), but that there are also five Beta Cities, one Gamma City, and four cities not represented in the GaWC classifications at all, including the #5 digital nomad city of Chiang Mai, Thailand. There is a similar breakdown in the representation of these digital nomad cities on the GPCI, with 20 out of
30 represented, and 10 out of 30 not appearing on the GPCI Index. With the Kearney rankings,
136 26 out of 30 digital nomad cities appear on the Kearney Index, but 10 of these 26 cities do not break Kearney’s top 30 global cities.
Digital Nomads as a population and global city function are both converging with existing global cities, as well as diverging from them. Of these Top 30 Digital Nomad Cities, 19 out of 30 appear on all three Global City Indexes, with 15 of these breaking the top 30 in the
GPCI and Kearney Indexes (London, New York City, Berlin, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Paris,
Barcelona, Singapore, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Madrid, Vienna, Seoul, and Sydney) and four not (Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Vancouver, and Copenhagen). These 15 cities are Global
Cities by every measure, showing that Global Cities maintain a strong influence in the networks of Digital Nomad Mobility; however, this influence is not totalizing with many Digital Nomad
Cities themselves not being included in the ranks and measures of Global Cities, showing a break and diversity in the types of cities that are coming to host this population and thus holding influence over the power of this function. The cities that do not appear in the GaWC
Classifications are Chiang Mai, Ubud, Canggu, and Taipei. The cities that do not appear in the
GPCI Index are Chiang Mai, Budapest, Lisbon, Ubud, Prague, Ho Chi Minh City, Seattle,
Canggu, Dublin, and Austin. The cities that do not appear on the 2018 AT Kearney Global City
Report are Chiang Mai, Ubud, Lisbon, Canggu, and Austin. The cities that appear in the GaWC
Classifications but do not appear on the GPCI or Kearney Indexes are Lisbon and Austin. The cities that do not appear on any Global City Index are Chiang Mai, Ubud, and Canggu which are ranked the #5, #17, and #25 top digital nomad cities respectively. What becomes visible in this grouping of off-the-index cities is the emergence of Beta and Gamma Cities, Second Tier Cities, and Southeast Asian Tourism Cities becoming key nodes of circulation in digital nomad
137 mobility. Due to the absence of any major registered global city functions or infrastructures measured in them, these off-the-index, or off-the-map, cities can be approached as digital nomad cities par excellence, the link between the cities in question and their circulating in digital nomad mobility potentially the clearest and simplest as it does not coincide with other global city functions and links.
What is truly interesting here is that, while the Top Global Cities are New York, London, and Tokyo, and New York and London are also some of the top digital nomad cities, Tokyo is far from the dominant city in both the overall list as well as in Asia in particular. Bangkok ranks highest on the list, with Chiang Mai coming in fifth just behind London and New York City while not appearing in any Global City Index. This is itself very interesting, with the Asian distribution of Digital Nomads being very different than one would expect ranked by global cities. Furthermore, the Southeast Asian Digital Nomad Cities make up a high proportion of digital nomad mobility in the network while also having the most cities that appear off the global city indexes, revealing that they play a large and unique role in this overall network. I hypothesize that this split between Global and non-Global Cities among the Top Digital Nomad cities is the result of the continued unbundling of production and consumption around the globe, with even the labor of Digital Nomads, who can theoretically work from anywhere, sometimes still being forced to locate in Global Cities due to spatially located social networks and established styles of consumption; however, they are also leaving these cities for off-the-map
Digital Nomad Cities in order to escape the choked sites of social reproduction they find in these
Global cities.
138 Exiting and Landing Sites - Which Cities are Most Strongly Connected?
Digital Nomads are being found in both Global and off-the-map Cities, but where are they leaving and where are they going? Which cities are losing them and which cities are gaining them? Where are the strongest flows in Digital Nomad Mobility occurring? Between which cities? What does this reveal about the relationships growing between the cities in the network and between Global and off-the-map Digital Nomad Cities? In this section I would like to illustrate the push and pull that cities in this network exert on each other. I will show that Digital
Nomad Cities typically lose just as many digital nomads as they gain, illustrating that digital nomads are both moving to large Global Cities while also moving away from them, theorizing they are both pulled in by the opportunities present there and pushed out by the cost of living, high barriers to entry and other facets of the urban crisis. By investigating the relationships between inflow and outflow and the top 60 edge connections in the network, I will begin to tease out how people are connecting to and leaving the city in crisis, as well as stitching together different cities as exiting and landing pads, speaking to the bounds and limits of their mobility.
Figure 3 below shows a scatterplot of Digital Nomad Cities by Weighted Outdegree and
Weighted Indegree, with nodes colored and detailed by the raw net numbers and percentages of digital nomad flows. Figure 3 shows that there is a relatively linear relationship between
Indegree and Outdegree, with most Digital Nomad Cities tending to send out just as many digital nomads as they receive, with a few cities losing or receiving substantially more than others. Of the Top Digital Nomad Cities, their net loss or gain remain bracketed between 3% of their total circulation in either the positive or negative direction, with larger net gains and losses occurring further down the list of Digital Nomad Cities.
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It seems that Digital Nomad Cities are not just receivers of Digital Nomads but are important junction points and stops where many Digital Nomads gather and centralize on their journeys, serving as waystations where nomads converge on their constellations of mobility
(Cresswell 2010). These findings back up the theoretical hypotheses arrived at in the preceding chapter, that Global Cities will continue to draw talent to their boundaries due to the economic and social opportunities they monopolize within (Moretti) but that once people arrive in these cities they will find themselves forced to confront the consumptive crisis occurring in the social reproductive infrastructure provided by these cities and seek to leave them for greener pastures, either for other Global Cities or for more Off-the-Map cities. These findings add further insight into this growing trend, revealing Digital Nomad Cities, both their Global City and Off-the-Map variants, attract Digital Nomad Mobility not as a once and for all form of migration but as a periodic, episodic and continuing flow of mobility, further revealed by the average 2.5 month city tenancy cycles of digital nomads remarked upon by Pieter Levels above.
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Figures 4 and 5 below are regionalized network visualizations of the Top 60 Edge
Connections, or digital nomad flows, in the Digital Nomad Trip Network. 10% of the total trips taken in the network are captured in these 60 directional edge connections, which make up 0.6% of the total edge connections in the network. Of these top 60 edge connections in the network, 31 are captured in the GaWC Edge Classificationsxxix, while 29 are not. In keeping with the above finding that Digital Nomad Cities maintain consistent levels of inflow and outflow, with Digital
Nomads entering into periodic and cyclical migration patterns, it can be assumed that the top 60 flows in this network will reveal the strongest foundational urban connections of Digital Nomad
Mobility, showing which cities and regions are building the strongest relationships around this cyclical digital nomad mobility, or put another way, which cities Digital Nomads are seeking out in particular and in relation to one another. These network visualizations point to the formation of a nascent Digital Nomad Regionalization of Cities. Figure 4 shows a strong North American
Region can be observed forming along the same lines of Alpha level GaWC edge connections established by already existing producer services relationships, with most of the cities in this region being Alpha GaWC Cities.
141 This North American region is centered around New York City which has the most degrees in this region. This region is connected to a more heterogenous, in terms of GaWC Cities and
Edges, European Region through the strong Alpha++ connection between New York and
London. The European region has a bit more diversity in the levels of GaWC Cities and Edge
Connections and in the less centralized connections established by different cities in the network, with more twin city connections than a fully integrated region and network. This European
Region is geographically proximate to two other Greater European Regions without having connections established between them, at least among the top 60 edge connections. The other two Greater European Regions seems to be in the Iberian Peninsula and between Saint
Petersburg and Moscow.
Figure 5 shows the other largest emerging region can be found in Southeast Asia, which has the most diversity and heterogeneity in terms of GaWC Cities and Edges, with Alpha, High
Sufficiency, and non-GaWC Cities and Edges represented, meaning that digital nomad mobility in this region both follows closely and diverges sharply from established global city connections between these cities.
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This region, with Bangkok and Chiang Mai serving as its two strongest poles, is also the most highly integrated, with strong connections made between almost every node in this region to each other, showing higher incidents of regional travel and integration in this region than in the others. Two other strong twin city connections exist close by between Sydney and Melbourne in
Australia and between Tokyo and Hong Kong in Northeastern Asia. All this goes to show that
Digital Nomad Mobility, in its strongest flows, is regionalizing and occurring between a handful of cities, with mobility on large scales confined to these regions or twin city movements. This goes to confirm the types of episodic and cyclical travel patterns engaged in by digital nomads that are occurring between this handful of cities they have strong place-based social networks in as well as showing the cities that Digital Nomads exit and enter. These twin city connections show that a portion of the strong mobility in this network happens between pairs of national or spatially proximate cities, with some nomads most likely travelling between one of the top cities
143 in their nation that they already live in and the other main city in their nation, moving back and forth between these two cities periodically. International travel or travel abroad seems to happen at a later stage.
Of these top 60 edge connections, the strongest digital nomad flows by far are occurring between Bangkok and Chiang Mai, with Bangkok sending 183 Digital Nomads to Chiang Mai, and Chiang Mai sending 108 to Bangkok. To gain insight into this connection, I went to the forum boards for Bangkok and Chiang Mai on Nomad List to try to understand why this connection was so strong. On the forum, it seems that many people start their Digital Nomad
Journeys in Bangkok because it is touristic, cheap, and an easy place to get used to living abroad.
After a few months, Digital Nomads get sick of the tourist-centric nature of Bangkok, how crowded and congested it is, and elect to go to Chiang Mai because it is less touristic and crowded, a more authentic city offering more opportunities to immerse oneself in the culture in a less commodified manner. The nomads then head back to Bangkok periodically before they leave to go elsewhere in the region or abroad. Bangkok serves as a mobility hub, a landing pad for incoming Digital Nomads to the region, and an exiting platform for nomads leaving to other cities in the region and the region itself.
I argue that this particular unpacking of the Bangkok-Chiang Mai relationship reveals a broader trend occurring in other parts of the Digital Nomad Network, where Digital Nomads start out wanting to travel, and thus their concerns over their destination are guided more by touristic concerns, guiding them to Global Cities. They then might jog between a few Global
Touristic Cities rapidly in their first few months, until getting tired of frequent travel and the
144 negatives of these touristic and congested cities. They come to recognize that this type of lifestyle demands more focus and attention than they originally thought as they come to desire more stability and to have their everyday lives not driven by concerns of tourism. This drives them to more local (off-the-map) cities, or cities that offer cultural difference and authenticity that they can craft their lives around. I will explore this growing regionalization, and the specific relationships between the cities in these regions, more in the next section.
New Nomadic Urban Regionalisms
I argued in the preceding chapter that the new urban crisis will lend to increasing regionalization as the crisis in affordability and access to the Global City will drive people and production out into the hinterland and outlying region outside the city in search of affordability and low barriers to entry. The above formation of nascent regionalisms in top digital nomad circulation flows shows this process is occurring even among this population of workers who are less place bound to global cities and their proximate hinterlands than almost any other type of worker. In this section, I will unpack the larger regions formed by digital nomad mobilities, exploring their geographic boundaries and rates of circulation compared to the network as whole.
I will then discuss the different functions and hierarchies the cities in each region play in relation to one another, establishing a separation between those cities that serve as connectors between these regions, largely Global Cities, and those where Digital Nomads are ultimately residing, largely non-Global Cities, revealing a corresponding centralization of movement between regions followed by a corresponding decentralization of residence. I argue that Global Cities serve as key mobility nodes that Digital Nomads pass through on their way to other locations,
145 both in terms of initial movement to Global Cities that they then leave, as well as exiting/landing pads they pass through temporarily between jaunts to other locations.
I also argue that the circularity in digital nomad movements, recurring seasonal mobility patterns corresponding to the social networks nomads have in each city, follows a similar dynamic to the connections made between cities by advanced producer services firms and their clients. GaWC claims that global city connections result when clients choose to do business in cities that have producer services firms that are well connected to other cities and firms globally, leading to cooperation and networking between cities based on firm agglomeration and reach. I argue that the same can now be said of digital nomad cities, where digital nomads seek out existing digital nomad social networks and environs, leading to regions and clusters of digital nomad mobility and habitation, like in the digital nomad regions identified above. Place still matters for this reason. In order to identify these forming nomadic regionalisms, I will make use of network modularity measures and divide the network into modularity groups for analysis.
Modularity groups are communities in a network where the density of connection and interaction between the nodes within a modularity group are denser and more intense than the interactions between the nodes of one modularity group and another. Modularity grouping as a form of community detection provides the means by which to identify where new regionalisms are being formed, where circulation is densest and also where there is separation between these regions, helping to isolate the pathways by which these separate regions are being connected. These new nomadic urban regionalisms can be analyzed like Global Ecumene(s) (Hannerz 1989), regions of persistent cultural, social, and economic interaction and exchange shaped by different scapes
(Appadurai 1990).
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Figure 6 below shows a full visualization of the digital nomad network broken into six distinct modularity groups or regions. These regions or modularity groups were found using the
Louvain Method which consists of two steps: (1) finding small communities and (2) aggregating the nodes in each community into a new network where the nodes are communities, hierarchically approximating regions with the highest density between their nodes and the lowest interactions between regions. The decision of where to make the community cutoffs, since it is hierarchical, does come down to subjective determination at what resolution these communities become intelligible. I chose a resolution cut-off of 1.0 which left me with six regions. I chose this cut-off because it left me with three strong regions that roughly corresponded to the nascent regionalisms of the top 60 digital nomad flows, as well as one interesting region in the Middle
East and North Africa that shows low levels of circulation, but potentially strong regionalization occurring outside of the dominant centers of Digital Nomad circulation and Global City influence.
From Figure 6, it appears there are three zones of high circulation and intensity, corresponding to The Americas, Greater Europe, and Southeast Asia. The relative sparseness of
South America, Africa, and the Middle East compared to these three zones of intense circulation is especially telling, showing that other global social inequalities lead to inequalities in digital nomad distribution. It is worth noting however that many cities in these more sparsely circulated regions serve as bridges between their regions and other regions, with cities in South America and even Africa found in the North American and European communities rather than in their geographically proximate regions. This can be taken to show that Nomad List’s English-
147 speaking western population of digital nomads travels back and forth to these locations from
North America and Europe, and not necessarily deeper into these countries themselves.
Figure 6: Visualization of the Full Nomad List Network, nodes sized by weighted edge degree and colored by modularity group, edges sized by weight and colored by source node’s modularity group. The largest region in terms of the number of cities and edges in the network is the Greater
European Region (Table 2) which comprises large swaths of Western and Continental Europe with excursions into Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, with a few outposts in Northern Africa.
The Greater Europe region is comprised of 299 Total Cities (40.57% of Network Nodes) and has
148 3120 edges (32.06% of total network edges) between these 299 Cities. The top 30 cities out of the 299 in this region, have a Digital Nomad Rank range of 2-78.
The next largest region in terms of the number of cities and edges in the network is the
Americas Region (Table 3) comprised of a dense North American core with moderately dense swaths of Central and South America with a few outposts in Southern Africa. The Americas
Region is comprised of 224 Total Cities (30.39% of Network Nodes) and has 1814 edges
149 (18.64% of Total Network Edges) between these 224 Cities. The top 30 cities out of the 224 in this region, have a Digital Nomad Rank range of 3-118.
The next largest region in terms of the number of cities and edges in the network is the
Southeast Asia Region (Table 4) comprised of a spatially dense core of cities in Thailand,
Indonesia, Cambodia, and Vietnam, with dense swaths in Japan, Hong Kong, India, Korea,
Australia and New Zealand with a few outposts in the Asian Pacific. The Southeast Asia region is comprised 180 Total Cities (24.42% of Network Nodes) and has 1719 edges (17.67% of Total
150 Network Edges) between these 180 Cities. The top 30 cities out of the 180 in this region, have a
Digital Nomad Rank range of 1-88.
The next largest region in terms of the number of cities and edges in the network is the
Middle East, Africa, Central Asia Region (Table 5) comprised of two spatially dense cores of cities in the Middle East and Northern Africa, with excursions into Southern Africa and Central
Europe. This region only has one Digital Nomad City which ranks in the top 100 Digital Nomad
Cities, Dubai at #52, which serves as the key city connecting this region to other regions, while also serving as a connector between other regions. The Middle East, Africa, Central Asia Region
151 is comprised of 27 Total Cities (3.66% of Network Nodes) and has 53 edges (0.54% of Total
Network Edges) between these 27 cities. The 27 Cities in this region have a digital nomad rank range of 52-723.
The other two modularity groups in the network are small and insignificant relative to these dominant modularity groups and the total network. One of these small modularity groups is the Polish Circuit which is comprised of 6 total cities in Poland and has 5 edges between these 6 cities, showing a small and idiosyncratic polish community of digital nomads with travel confined to the circuit of these 6 cities with few links to cities and regions outside of it. The last
152 modularity group is comprised of one city, Grundarfjorour, Iceland, which has zero edges, completely disconnected from the network, an outlier in the dataset of a city with a page on
Nomad List that no paying user has travelled to. The Polish circuit is provocative in identifying the micro-regionalization accompanying larger regionalization in digital nomad constellations of mobility, most likely reflecting a small group of Polish digital nomads grabbing onto remote work and travelling around their country as they attempt to establish a community for themselves to gain success and stability as remote workers before jumping abroad. I hold that this finding is most likely largely demonstrative of many of the circuits making up the large modularity groups above if they were decomposed. I argue that disaggregating the large modularity groups would reveal many smaller communities within these larger regions where similar dynamics are occurring, but with a larger population living in these smaller circuits of cities making periodic jumps to other circuits and stitching them together. This role of being between regions and stitching them together is what makes the digital nomad as a figure a potentially transformative force, bringing new cities and regions into connection in ways they have not been before.
This being betwixt-and-between is also an important attribute and function that cities in the digital nomad network can play, with certain cities in the network serving as nodes linking together different regions and communities. This is similar to the way that Bangkok served as the landing pad for digital nomads in the Southeast Asia Region, as well as the hub of the region for travel within and outside of it in the example provided above. To identify the cities that play this linking role routing circulation between regions and establishing regional interconnections, I will utilize network betweenness centrality measures. Betweenness Centrality is a common social network measure used to find individuals that connect social circles, which can be adapted to the
153 network at hand to find the cities that connect the Regions identified above. Figure 7 (below) is a network visualization that shows the Top 30 Cities by Betweenness Centrality and the edge connections within and between them, with nodes colored by the region and edges colored by their origin region.
Figure 7: Geo-coded Network of Digital Nomad Flows between the Top 30 Betweenness Centrality Cities. Nodes are sized by weighted degree and colored by modularity group, edges are sized by edge weight and colored by the source node’s modularity group.
This visualization reveals that the strongest Betweenness Centrality Cities act as prisms through which regional nomad mobility is concentrated. These cities simultaneously develop deeper connections to their local regions at the same time they establish deeper connection to other regions and international locales. These betweenness centrality cities, like New York and
London, often receive just as many nomads as they send between each other in other regions, though there are cities that seems to send more nomads to other regions than they receive, like a few cities in the Southeast Asia Region. These Betweenness Centrality cities serve as gateways between both the cities in their region as well as other regions abroad, differentiated most by the
154 differences in their in/out flows, both within their regions and outside of them. A breakdown in the types of gateway cities could be established by comparing ratios of degree and weighted degree each of these Betweenness Cities have to cities in their region compared to outside of their region, most likely showing a split between intra-region gateway cities and inter-region gateways cities.
In terms of the regional shares of gateway cities in the network, only the top 3 Regions
(Greater Europe, the Americas, and Southeast Asia) are represented among the top 30 gateway cities by betweenness centrality, with the Greater European Region holding 11 gateway, The
Southeast Asia Region holding 9 gateway cities, and The Americas Region holding 10 gateway cities respectively. A closer inspection of these top 30 gateway cities reveals that being an Alpha
City has a strong relationship to having a high betweenness centrality score with 24 out of 30 of these cities falling within the Alpha Classification broadly. This seems to confirm that cities classified as top global nexuses of other global city functions and processes would also centralize and connect the flow of digital nomads across regions. There are six cities that fall outside this
Alpha Classification with Berlin, Seattle, Vancouver and Boston falling under the Beta
Classification, Las Vegas falling under the High Sufficiency Classification, and Chiang Mai being unclassified. This points to the emergence and possibility of cities other than top level global cities playing a connecting function within and between regions via this population, showing that global city dominance is not complete and totalizing.
The above findings show that this set of cities serve as gateways between regions and modularity groups, and also begins to chart and elaborate emerging hierarchies and relationships
155 between digital nomad cities, potentially showing the role traditional global cities play in relation to more pure digital nomad cities. A look at the Digital Nomad City Rank shows that betweenness centrality and serving as a gateway between regions, is associated with high nomad circulation and placement within the network. Among these 30 gateway cities, the range of
Digital Nomad Rank falls between 1-59, with 20 out of these 30 cities also falling in the top 30 digital nomad cities. The top digital nomad cities that are not top gateway cities seem to be more purely digital nomad cities contra Global cities. These non-gateway digital nomad cities may not serve as gateways between regions but as ultimate destinations of mobility, where digital nomads choose to reside for longer periods of time before leaving for elsewhere and crossing through the gateway cities to other destinations. They may be sought for their potentially disconnected and off-the-map nature mirrored by their being off the indexes, something that will be explored further in later chapters. The seasonal and episodic travel patterns of digital nomads lend toward this reading that nomads travel between gateway cities and spend time there between their longer term and periodic residencies in more local cities and destinations, these gateway cities also likely serving this role due to their centralization as hubs of international air travel and tourism.
Considering digital nomads as an extension of workers in traditional agglomeration economies, I also posit that many digital nomads probably start as workers in agglomeration economies in global cities who then use remote work to escape and leave them. This dynamic was covered above in the exiting and landing pad section above, that people go to global cities for opportunities and then leave them. These two dynamics, (1) that of central hubs of travel and tourism between destinations, and (2) movement to and away from global cities centered around opportunity, serve as partial explanations for the emerging dynamics viewed here between global
156 cities and more purely digital nomad cities. Due to the general and aggregated nature of this network dataset, these two dynamics cannot be completely unpacked to see whether the movement in this network is for the purposes of further travel, for settlement, or for tourism.
However, it does seem plausible to claim that these dynamics are becoming less distinguishable as settlement and mobility become more episodic and frequent among this population and these dynamics are put into play and actualized by different and overlapping segments of the broader population.
Reconfiguring International Relations of Production
I would like to close this section on the findings of this digital nomad network model by revisiting one of the more provocative theoretical and speculative claims made in the preceding chapter: that the mobility of this population can reconfigure the larger global organization of production along regional and national lines. Approaching digital nomads as a labor force and productive unit, as individual producers with their own links to western contracts and incomes, and simultaneously as consumers and tourists, digital nomads constitute a global flow and function that can be grabbed by cities and nations around the globe, and even by cities in the semi-periphery and periphery. The transformative potential of attracting global flows of digital nomads in shifting national fortunes within the division of labor lies both within the size and potential scope of the digital nomad population as well as the role it plays in the current international division of labor. As discussed in the introduction, and in describing the dataset above, the digital nomad population is currently estimated at 10 to 100 million, with tens of millions of aspirants waiting to join it its ranks (Mann & Adkins 2018; Levels 2021; MBO
Partners 2018). Furthermore, there are already 2 million remote workers currently active on labor
157 platforms like upwork (Graham & Anwar 2019) and even more on other platforms (Kässi &
Lehdonvirta 2018) that could become digital nomads if they start engaging in circuits of mobility outside of their home countries. Digital nomads are known to perform labor associated with producer services and the creative class (Wood, Graham, Lehdonvirta 2019; Knudsen &
Conaway 2017), working as “creative professionals (writers, designers, editors, content creators, etc.), IT professionals (programmers, developers, etc.), [and] marketing and communication professionals” (MBO Partners 2018). It seems reasonable to approach digital nomads as an outgrowth of the labor forces employed in the small flexible firms of the global city’s agglomeration economies, and as such, the spatial relocation of these jobs and workers have the potential to alter the global cities they are leaving as well as the new locations they choose to reside.
Taken as a macro-level economic and social force, digital nomads and their mobility can have a myriad of consequential implications for the cities and nations they choose to call home, including but not limited to their positions within the international division of labor. When these digital nomad travel and settlement flows are taken in aggregate, given the size of the population, the type of work they perform and their typically USD and Euro incomes, their circulation in different locales can potentially raise the status of cities and nations as a whole in the world system. The outsourcing and reterritorialization of other global city functions, like business process outsourcing and tourism (Shatkin 2007) to places like India and other semi-periphery nations and regions has already been shown to hold the potential to help these areas grow other global city functions and raise their position in the world system. These resettlements of global city functions relied both on firms as a whole, and as the unit of production, moving, opening,
158 and clustering in cities and areas with the already existing capacity to service these flows, like the Indian Cities of Bangalore and Mumbai which host the affiliates and regional offices of
Western Multinational Tech Companies and a large English-speaking workforce. This capacity, while not as costly and capital intensive as traditional industrial manufacturing build up still requires a fair amount of already existing power and capital to build up that only a handful of cities can provide.
With the move of the productive unit from the firm to the individual remote worker or digital nomad who provides the ends and means of their own labor process and can work from almost anywhere as long as there is internet, all a city or nation has to do now is capture these individual workers to build and establish a base for potential global city functions. Cities and countries can be competitive in attracting and building this global city function by appealing to the worker directly by doing such things as offering special digital nomad visas allowing for longer jaunts of periodic settlement by these mobile workers, like in Thailand (Ashworth 2020), or offer tax breaks, workspaces, and residences like Vermont and Tulsa, OK (Durio 2018; Smith
2021). These actions are less capital intensive than attracting firms and multinational corporations, and due to the fact that they are courting labor more directly than necessarily capital, their consumptive, cultural, lifestyle and recreational amenities play a larger role than in capturing other global city flows.
This gives different types of cities and countries an advantage and edge over others, with unique cultural consumption offerings, nature and ecosystems, and low costs of living and barriers to entry taking on a premium in different ways than before. This can be particularly
159 advantageous for cities and nations in the semi-periphery and periphery of the world system who can capture remote workers making USD and Euros, allowing the workers to capitalize on comparative advantage in terms of currency exchanges and costs of living, while at the same time bringing higher amounts of value into these areas’ consumptive and reproductive industries.
There is also the possibility that attracting these workers can lead to the growth, transmission, and fertilization of their skills and abilities to grab onto western contracts to other people in the region as well as the growth of new businesses and ventures around these skills. This is all to say that where these remote workers cluster can have large impacts on the economic potentials of the places they travel to, gaining their settlement opening the realm of possibility for a host of cities and nations that cannot compete on other fronts of economic production, with the potential to have spillover effects on the international organization of production, at least on the level of remote workers.
Scholars of the platform economy have looked at the global impacts of remote work on the organization of production, looking at the growth of remote work contracts and the relationships between where these contracts originate and where they are outsourced. This work has mainly focused on more task- and click-work oriented remote work contracts, the lower end of the remote work labor force, in establishing new relationships of production. They show these contracts originate mainly in the US and Western Europe and are sent to India and other low-cost of labor countries (Wood, Graham, Lehdonvirta, Hjorth, 2018). These national labor flows are seen as being sent from one firm to another, from the core to the periphery, and while they constitute opportunities for growth in semi-periphery countries, these opportunities appear limited due to the level of value ascribed to the work these contracts require. This model of
160 remote workflows assumes that workers in these receiving countries stay in the countries where they receive the work, that even though their work is produced globally they themselves are increasingly place-based with low mobility.
This may be true for a majority of remote workers at the low-value added end of click- work but is not the case for all remote workers, with Graham and Anwar (2019) stating that segments of the remote worker population are performing high value added ends of the production process while enjoying increased autonomy over their labor, learning new skills and earning high-incomes, even if this is a privileged and stratified minority. It is safe to assume that digital nomads heavily overlap with this more privileged end of the remote worker population and that some of the remote work contracts they receive are captured in this platform economy workflow modelling. I will go a step further and argue that while remote workers may grab onto remote work in one country, they may not stay in that country, they may go elsewhere. This is what the digital nomad network assumes, adding an extra step to the modelling of remote work labor processes and production arrangements as these workers leave the cities and countries they are from for comparative advantage in cost of living and their own social reproduction costs, as well as for more subjective, lifestyle and consumptive based reasons as well. There is the production side of remote work where firms find workers in countries capable of producing this type of labor force that can perform these contracts, and then the performative and consumptive side where these workers seek alternative and lower cost sites of social reproduction to fulfil their labor process and reproduce themselves. The increasing separation between the firm and the worker speaks to the continued unbundling of production and consumption in the global economy.
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To illustrate the potential these flows have to establish new relationships of production and consumption in the world system, I have aggregated the digital nomad network flows from the level of cities to nation states. From this basis, I will proceed to investigate and analyze what countries fall amongst these highly circulated outlier countries and focus on the impacts their mobility is having on reshaping broader global networks of international production in general.
Figure 10 (below) is a network visualization of the digital nomad mobility network aggregated to the national level, showing the broader interactions and connections that digital nomad movements are forming between countries. Figure 10 shows three modularity groups on the country level, with the Americas merging with large swaths of Europe, with some of the strongest interconnections within this modularity group occurring between the US, Canada,
Mexico, and the UK. The next modularity group is composed of Greater Asia, with Thailand serving as the Hub for intra-regional connections with relatively even flows split between other countries in the region. The last modularity group is comprised of Germany and its proximate geographic region, with connections to Russia and Denmark as well, this modularity group having relatively low interconnections between its countries. In the greater network, the
Americas and Western Europe have strong connections to the other two regions, whereas Greater
Asia and the German/Russian Regions have weak connections. Furthermore, the US and
Thailand have a strong interrelationship, with Thailand concentrating mobility in its own region, both taking in digital nomads from the US before they head to other countries in the region, while also gathering digital nomads in its region before sending them to the US. I focus on this particular dynamic to show how the outsourcing of contracts is not a uni-directional process, but one that begets continued flows back and forth between the countries involved.
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Figure 8: Countries with a Weighted Degree above 268 and Edges above 17. Countries colored by Modularity Group, Edges colored by Source Country.
I hypothesize that some of these flows result when the workers in a contract receiving country jump onto remote flows and company payrolls in another country and then eventually go to the outsourcer country to visit and work. This hypothesis is motivated by and serves as an extension of the dynamics that AnnaLee Saxenian (2005) identifies as brain circulation, whereby workers migrate to a country for work, learn their organizational forms, and then travel back to their home countries to replicate and adapt these organizational forms. With digital nomads,
163 work is being migrated and performed within local organizational forms. Once the workers have cut their teeth on the work sent to them, they are better able and willing to travel to the contract originating country to fit into its organizational and occupational structure. These findings are, if not completely demonstrative, are indicative of the type of large scale impacts digital nomad mobility can have on existing networks of production and consumption globally. When the role of digital nomads as a production unit is taken seriously, their movement can produce a host of potential outcomes with the power to change international relations of production and more. To know the actual content of these growing potentials and their strength, I have to go beyond an objective charting of digital nomad mobility to the subjectivities and particular subject positions of individual digital nomads to unpack the variety of digital nomads that there are and the types of relationships they form through their mobility.
The Restructuring of the Agglomeration Economy
In the preceding chapter, I argued that the new urban crisis was the result of the productive and consumptive circuits of socio-spatial formations coming into conflict when asked to reproduce two distinct yet overlapping regimes of accumulation. I posited that the new urban crisis structurally allows for two spatial fixes to this contradiction between productive and consumptive elements within cities: (1) the extension of the urban crisis outwards into its lower priced hinterlands, creating expensive and expanding mega-regions while labor follows work to the global city and resides further out in this expanded hinterland; and (2) that while many people will still flock to global cities due to their monopoly over employment and opportunity, others will start looking outside of global cities and their expanding mega-regions for other locales with cheaper costs, seeking the creative class low barriers to entry and unique cultural
164 consumption that is disappearing from global cities, leading them to other less choked consumptive sites. This latter fix has normally been restricted to those with the ability to create their own businesses, or those with the required skills to fit the small niches available to them in these lower-tier cities, their mobility to these locales relying on the spatial displacement of capital (Harvey) to make production present there; however, with the introduction of remote work, workers can grab onto contracts from anywhere and bring their work with them, leading to the spatial displacement of labor for the ends of consumption. Both of these fixes are occurring simultaneously, with digital nomads capable of attaching themselves to global cities or off-the- map cities.
The digital nomad has increased agency in choosing where to reside, and their choices over styles of consumption can potentially guide their mobility more so now than ever before. In the above analysis of the digital nomad mobility model, both of these fixes are reflected in the mobility patterns of digital nomads observed on an aggregate level with top digital nomad cities composed of a swath of global cities and off-the-map cities. Digital nomads continue to attach themselves to global cities, but also move periodically between cities of different stature within and between their region, stopping in global cities either as the first part of the digital nomad journey, for touristic bouts, or as way-stations between their time spent in off-the-map cities. The discrepancies between the global cities and off-the-map cities on the top digital nomad city list reveal the start of this separation occurring between the sites of production and the sites of consumption that together initially made up the form of the global city. Whereas I could only hint at this in theory in the preceding chapter, the findings in this chapter clearly and provocatively illustrate the different directions this separation is taking.
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I argue that this separation is preceding along the lines documented above because I take the figure of the digital nomad as a unit of production seriously. Taking the digital nomad as a unit of production is to recognize that there has been a movement over the past 25 years in the scale at which level the organization of production is carried out on the continuum of the firm to the worker (Hardt & Negri 2017). The digital nomad par excellence falls at the extreme end of the worker pole of the continuum, with the large-scale multinational corporation at the other end.
The history of political economy and the switch from industrialism to post-industrialism has been the movement from the multinational firm, to the small flexible firms of the agglomeration economy, to independent contracting workers. Urban political economy is then the teasing out of how the scale at which the productive actor operates and relates to production leads to different connections between socio-spatial formations and their elements. The separations occurring between elements, in particular the sites of production and consumption revealed in the findings above, can be read as a result of this change in the scale of actor but also as co-occurrence of these actors in different spaces. I argue that these changes in productive and consumptive geographies is a result of the growth of productive units and workers further towards the digital nomad end of the spectrum, and that while multinationals and the small flexible firms of the agglomeration economies still exist, and in many cases in dominant ways, they themselves are beginning to unbundle.
The flow of digital nomads, and the remote work they carry with them, seems to follow similar yet divergent patterns of agglomeration and settlement compared to the flows that are normally used to define and locate a global city, normally thought of as flows of capital and its
166 corresponding command and control functions represented by the producer services and their corresponding labor force. The unbundling of the corporation and the globalization of production were seen as being the sources driving the new geographies of capital and labor leading to the agglomeration economies of the global city. The location of work, capital and firms in these locations used to be seen as the key factors driving a new global concentration of the economy, leading workers to both want and need to move to these cities to attach themselves to employment and the economy in general, otherwise finding themselves left behind. The patterns evidenced above change the field of vision from the location of small specialized firms to the class of digital nomad workers themselves, workers assumed to be working remote jobs and performing the labor formerly performed in the specialized firms of the global city. This shift from the small flexible firm to the digital nomad reveals a new unbundling process occurring: not the unbundling of the corporation but the unbundling of these agglomeration economies themselves. With the digitization of the work performed by flexible firms comprising the agglomeration economies of global cities, the jobs themselves leave the confines and constraints of the firm and are directed, in some instances, to even smaller and more flexible firms in other countries and cities with lower labor costs, or directly to workers themselves, by-passing both the management and needs of the sub-contracting firm. This digitization of work finds its peak individualization in the subject of the digital nomad, a worker subject who works for themselves in an entrepreneurial manner, whether it is for a firm for whom their work is produced but their location and manner of work is up to them, or directly for themselves as producers of their own products entering into individual contracting arrangements with firms on the planetary labor market (Graham & Anwar 2019). With the economic agent beginning to switch from the firm to the entrepreneurial self (Brockling 2016), the concerns and conditions bracketing which
167 locations become attractive and sites of global production turn from the sites of capital to that of labor, at least in terms of this sub-population of digital nomads.
While these workers have internalized the dictates of homo oeconomicus, thinking like firms trying to maximize their economic opportunities, their concerns over their own social reproduction and the lifeworld they inhabit pull these entrepreneurial motivations in different directions than the subjectivity of capital demands, lower costs for the sake of increased surplus value completely disembedded from local context must reckon with the consumptive needs of the worker. The digital nomad presents itself as simultaneously the embodiment of the positions of the firm and of the worker. I have posited this theoretically here, a phenomenon which is only growing in complexity and size as the figure of the digital nomad is fleshed out by the workers grabbing onto remote contracts and organizing their own production according to these contradictory aims. In this model, digital nomads are beginning to flow to both global cities as well as cities outside of their aura and influence, both maintaining and altering the urban networks set up by the other global flows attending global capitalism, forming new networks and activating new places as capable of hosting this type of worker and hence extended segments of the global economy. The question becomes “Why do people who do remote work move from agglomeration economies to these digital nomad cities? Why don’t they stay in global cities?”.
The findings above show this shift empirically, but why? This puts forward the need to understand how the worker as a subject and agent is tying together production and consumption, and the other elements of socio-spatial formations, together differently than at the level of the firm, pointing towards the need to understand this subjectivity, the project of the following chapters of this dissertation.
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Interlude – Towards a General Typology
169 Chapter 3
Urban Prospecting: The Objective and Subjective Conditions of Labor Mobility
The Spatial Displacement of Labor, the phenomenon and agentic force elaborated on in the preceding chapters on Revisiting the Urban Question and Digital Nomad Cities, is the subject being investigated and fleshed out in the rest of this dissertation. In this interlude chapter, I will pick up with where I left off in the Digital Nomad Cities chapter, beginning by elaborating more on my previous remarks on the spatial displacement of labor and how digital nomads fit within it. I will discuss how the theoretical and computational analyses pursued in the previous chapters have spoken to the objective conditions of production and reproduction that underly the new urban crisis enabling this wave of the spatial displacement of labor. The preceding analysis of these objective conditions of labor displacement bracketed and characterized it as a reaction to past spatial displacements of capital, driving mobility and flight in labor to both global cities and beyond them to digital nomad offbeat cities. The shifts in the objective conditions of the labor process and in the elements of the urban socio-spatial formation that make the spatial displacement of labor possible have already been identified, but still constitute an external view.
This view from outside makes visible the external conditions that frame the choices of populations to become mobile, presenting the obstacles their mobility faces and bracketing the means by which this mobility can be pursued. In the Digital Nomad Cities chapter, I identified the different circuits and types of mobility this population grappling with the new urban crisis can engage in, as well as elaborated a number of hypotheses to why certain circuits of mobility and ties between particular locales are emerging. However, these explanations remain hypotheses and adhere at a general level of abstraction, divorced from the lived experiences of
170 those engaging in these circuits of mobility and the variations in background and motivation that prime different members of this population to engage in one circuit of mobility over another.
Thus far, the quantity of the spatial displacement of labor has been investigated and now so too must its quality, or rather its varying qualities resulting from the subjective choices of individual digital nomads themselves. It is with this in mind that my analysis will begin to pivot from a consideration of the objective conditions of the spatial displacement of labor, carried out at the macro-level of the socio-spatial formation and globalized urban networks of production, to that of its subjective level carried out at the level of labor which I will refer to as urban prospecting which comprises their decision-making processes and orientations to place, employment, social reproduction and the self that make these circuits of mobility legible and meaningful. In order to transition from a consideration of these objective conditions of the spatial displacement of labor to its subjective conditions, I need to provide a framework for reading these subjective conditions from lived experiences in particular locales amongst actually existing digital nomads. This will require the elaboration of place-specific typologies attempting to find variation in the population of digital nomads that is shaped by the backgrounds of the populations clustered in each location, as well as by a consideration of the choices that led similar yet different members of this population to the same location with diverging outcomes, and differences in choices and experiences determined by the location.
To begin elaborating and scaffolding these place-specific typologies and investigate the subjective conditions of the spatial displacement of labor, I will move from the general definition of digital nomads arrived at in the preceding chapter, and its axes of definition, towards the
171 processes by which placement on these axes is determined. This move from the objective to the subjective is also a move from the general to the specific, from the quantitative to the qualitative, from the logic of the firm to the worker, and this chapter will serve as an operational interlude defining and clarifying the manner in which I will make connections across the different conditions and types of data within this dissertation with the aim of arriving at a fuller picture of the broader phenomenon of the spatial displacement of labor. In order to disaggregate the various dynamics and actors making up the spatial displacement of labor, I need to begin to identify and locate the various structural positions that members of this population are coming to inhabit and flesh out the lifeworlds they encounter in these positions and the subjectivities formed within them. To do so, I must explore the fluid and influx structural positions that are available to mobile labor, the origins and destinations of those coming to occupy them, and describe the solidifying subject-positions that will come to influence the outcomes of this broader and still inchoate spatial displacement of labor.
The end goal will be to create a sketch of dominant subject positions within this digital nomad population and place them in relation to each other on place-specific and open-ended typologies, to clarify and understand the import and implications of the various circuits of mobility to the global city and away from it, the task of the two following ethnographic chapters.
These ethnographic chapters will present case studies that approach different agglomerations of this population found within co-living spaces, the localized enclaves and spatial hubs of this mobile population, located within both a global city and an offbeat city: Los Angeles and
Dharamsala, India respectively. These case studies will investigate the effects of place and co- habitation in space on the dynamics underlying the two dominant circuits of mobility identified
172 in Digital Nomad Cities chapter – movement to the global city and away from it. By using place as an independent variable to explore its regression on employment, social reproduction, and conceptions of self, and looking at how these variables regress on each other in the lifeworlds of different digital nomads, I will describe the different subject positions present in each location and place them on place-specific typologies based on how these variables are being weighted and regressed according to sets of concretizing and identifiable cultural and normative models. These different subject-positions, and the cultural models for action they regularize, act as decision- making algorithms, or logics of urban prospecting, bracketing the pursuit of different spatial futures determined both by the previous social locations of the actors using them and the socio- spatial destinations they seek to reach.
Towards an Expanding and Fluid Typology
To prepare for the project of expounding and evaluating these expanding and fluid place- based typologies, I need to explain and qualify how I can take the populations present in co- living spaces within Global Cities like Los Angeles and Offbeat Cities like Dharamsala as representative cases of Digital Nomads as a broader research subject. These actually existing populations clustered in particular places provide an opportunity to begin unpacking the heterogeneity of this broader population and determine where different sub-populations fall along the axes of digital nomad-hood identified in the Digital Nomad Cities chapter, namely in terms of their relation to the dimensions of mobility and employment. By approaching these subjects ethnographically, I can begin to approach and understand the subjective orientations and logics that undergird the decision-making processes that establish the content of their relationships to mobility and employment. Analyzing these subjective orientations will also help
173 me unpack and establish further metrics and measures by which to understand digital nomads as not just a population defined externally but as a cultural group and potential class position, or meeting place of class fragments, being created and contested by a diversity of actors from a variety of backgrounds with different experiences and motivations caught up in the pursuit of this way of life.
By connecting the analysis of these sub-populations to the different circuits of mobility and types of locational choices pursued by digital nomads as a general population from the Digital
Nomad Cities chapter, I will begin to tease out how variation in backgrounds and motivations, in relation to place, self and employment, lead to divergent outcomes in experiences of mobility.
Utilizing ethnographic and interview data, I will flesh out the various subjective factors and decisions that underly and shape the understanding of this population’s mobility and remote employment in the abstract, concretizing these general measures in the analysis of individual constellations and biographies of mobility. If the objective attributes of engaging in mobility and remote employment allow the drawing of loose boundaries around this population, then the subjective factors that make these relationships to mobility and employment legible and meaningful allow me to find and demarcate difference and variation within this broader population, identifying clusters of decision-making and fluid mechanisms whereby differential outcomes can be achieved by similar others. How can the relationships between these objective and subjective factors of digital nomadhood be connected and made sense of? How do I get from outcomes of mobility and employment to the decision-making processes and understandings of self that shape these outcomes?
174 To begin, I will start with a general definition of digital nomads to specify the bases of difference and variation operating within it. As referenced in the Digital Nomad Cities chapter,
“Digital nomads, or remote working travelers, are people who live at least part of the year away from their home country while working remotely as an employee for their employer, as a contractor for companies or if they have their own business for themselves” (Levels 2021).xxx
The initial discussion of this definition in the preceding chapter argued that this definition was simultaneously broad and narrow at the same time, the boundaries of this category shaped by how individuals relate to their own mobility and employment. I found that there was most likely a core group of digital nomad influencers who held to the more strict interpretation of this definition, living abroad for large swaths of the year while also being employed remotely; however, I also argued that this was most likely a vocal minority amongst a broader and more heterogenous population not adhering to this strict definition of the digital nomad, but identifying with and drawn to the moniker performed by this core group while only partially fitting the definitionxxxi. The preceding definition as given takes place for granted in that it brackets mobile remote working populations as discrete and identifiable, independent of their residence, with the locations they travel to being roughly interchangeable. When the places this population originates in or arrives at are looked at, they are understood as outcomes of these other two variables of mobility and employment. However, mobility and remote employment cannot be treated as independent variables used to predict where this population chooses to travel and reside, but as processes and relationships felt on the level of experience in the lifeworld and within the subjectivities of each potential member of this population.
Being mobile does not have meaning simply in itself, i.e., from having traveled to many places, but because of the reasons one has chosen to be mobile and what one gets out of it;
175 reciprocally place has a meaning not just because people choose to travel or reside there but for the reasons and logics they employ when deciding to invest their mobility in that location, of the qualities of place and possibilities for different life outcomes located within and represented by the place in particular. Treating mobility quantitatively leads to a quantitative treatment of place, where place is interchangeable and merely an outcome of increased mobility and detachment from the work place, as opposed to being instead a motivator of mobility and a source of meaning, belonging and connection that causes people to engage in mobility and pursue remote work and a detachment from certain types of places to begin with. The discussion up to this point concerning the contradictions of production and social reproduction underlying the new urban crisis, as well as of the shifting spatial dispersion of digital nomads as a laboring population, has approached place from the side of the objective conditions of production. In the chapters that follow, I will be approaching place from the subjective conditions of production, from the subjectivity and lifeworld of this population itself. Previously, I investigated how changes in production related to the city changed and impacted other elements of the socio-spatial formationxxxii. Now I will consider how these changes concretized in specific places have affected how people residing within and between them pursue their livelihood and future, and how their relationship to place, and hence their mobility, changes the relationships between these elements.
From the Objective to the Subjective
I will approach these subjective conditions of production as subjectively derived attributes of place mobilized and formulated when digital nomads consider and evaluate particular socio- spatial formations for investments of mobility, referring to this evaluation process and its
176 constitutive elements by the term urban prospecting. The varying degree to which different relationships to employment, the self, and social reproduction are made possible by these different attributes of place, and their differences in intensity and quality across sub-populations of digital nomads, will allow for the sorting of this population into particular place-specific typologies. By teasing out variation in attributes, decision-making and intensity of clustering in the digital nomad population and their relation to the particular locales they come to, as well as how they plug into production globally, this variation can be used to identify and define different representative types within these place-specific typologies. By unpacking the decision-making underlying and particularizing each representative subject position within these place-specific typologies, I will identify both inherited spatial-cultural models, scripts and social reproductive configurations ordering the nature of the relationships between the terms of work, place and self, as well as new emergent cultural admixtures guiding the reproduction of a style of life that allows one to participate within the continually shifting regime of flexible accumulation (Aglietta
1978, Harvey 1992, Jessop 1997).xxxiii
The different experiences of place emerging from this variegated populations’ engagement with far-flung socio-spatial formations serve as the window through which I will read the translation of the objective factors of production within a socio-spatial formation to its subjective factors within the lifeworld of these digital nomads and back again. In order to read this translation between the objective and subjective back and forth, from inherited environment to mobile decision-making to its spatial outcomes, place must be understood as nested and bundled historical topographic space (Massey 2005) where bracketed systems and processes of production, consumption, exchange, and administration accumulate and reinforce particular relations between employment and social reproduction (Castells 1977), making different life
177 possibilities for the populations who reside within and between these spaces possible. The manner in which these different life possibilities are constructed and actualized are the result of how the terms of the urban socio-spatial formation are marshalled and wielded to the ends of social reproduction and particular life possibilities, these two factors historically ancillary and subordinate to the ultimate requirements of production, profit-maximization and accumulation.
This utilization and organization of the existing socio-spatial formation’s elements to particular ends by different urban populations produces a limited number of stable cultural scripts that can be continually performed to reproduce the sought-after outcomes, and thus the socio-spatial formation itself. These cultural scripts of reproduction, when taken up by workers and urban inhabitants, result in conceptions of self and worldviews that both enable the reproduction of the labor process and the socio-spatial formation (the connections between its elements) as well as provide the material for new bases of collectivity, action, meaning, and life possibility that both reinforce and challenge the existing relations of production that produced them. Urban prospecting thus is the totality of these existing and emerging cultural scripts, and the underlying experiences of mobility, place, and the new urban crisis that bracket and shape them. The following chapters will begin the work of cataloging and charting the extent of the urban prospecting practices produced and accumulated by digital nomads in each site, and the logics and subjectivities that shape them.
The Contours of an Emerging Subjectivity: Connections to Place, Employment, and Conceptions of Self
The above discussion of the objective and subjective conditions of the spatial displacement of labor argues that, simply put, even in the age of the near complete digitization of everyday life
178 and the massive introduction and adoption of remote work within industry: Place still matters!
Roughly twenty-five years after Sassen (1994, 2001) arrived at roughly the same conclusion in
The Global City, the proclamation “The City is Dead, Long Live the City” still rings true and triumphant. The question of whether place still matters has been continually formulated incorrectly and imprecisely: it is not a question of whether place still matters but how places matters differently. Sassen answered this question by looking at how place functioned differently under post-industrial production than it did under fordist production. I will take a similar approach and look at how the role of place has continued changing under post-industrial production, in the global city in the midst of the new urban crisis, and in offbeat and off-the-map cities with the introduction of digitized and remote-performable production. As argued above, place is not an interchangeable container of social processes, but a meaningful space and field of human experience and meaning, the backdrop and setting of the lifeworld that presents different possibilities for being and existence to social actors.
The change in the role that place plays on different scales and epochs of production must be understood as a change not just in economic function and position within the global division of labor, but also as a change in meaning, discourse, and life outcomes on the level of labor and its various subjectivities. The meaning place has to labor comes to be determined by their position in relation to their own employment, social reproduction and their conceptions of themselves, and how different places come to mediate the relations between these terms. Movement to and away from the city, the two circuits of the spatial displacement of labor being considered, bracket what place can come to mean for this population, with their experiences of the city also
179 changing the meaning it has for them, and thus which of these two circuits of mobility they will choose to engage in.
In order to understand the spatial orientations that make movement to the city and flight away from it possible, I will be conducting case studies of the populations caught up in these two circuits of the spatial displacement of labor, studying this population as it anchors to the Global
City in one instance, and flees it for an offbeat outpost in the next. The first case study will be investigating circuits of mobility that take the pre-eminent North American Global City of Los
Angeles as their destination, constituting a first instance of experiencing the city for large segments of the digital nomad population amassing there, these populations drawn to Los
Angeles for its culture, uniqueness and the monopolization of employment it wields. The second case study will investigate the circuit of mobility that brings different segments of the digital nomad population to the Offbeat Outpost of Dharamsala, India in the mountains of Southeast
Asia, mobility here constituting an instance of flight for those who have already experienced the discontent and alienation of life in the crisis-ridden city and seek its alternative in far-flung and varied locales. In order to flesh out the various factors and motivations that underly and produce these two distinct yet interrelated circuits of mobility, I must begin to disaggregate the population of study and approach digital nomads in their broad diversity.
Digital nomads must be approached as a heterogenous category of mobile individuals whose mobility is performed for myriad inexhaustible reasons not reducible purely to the general abstract trends of political economy nor to ideal manifestations and definitions of the digital nomad as a cultural figure or united class actor. Whether these actors are drawn into the city or drawn away from it, the city, and the plural relationships of meaning and connection to its
180 elements these diverse actors have to it, hangs over these sites as an unobtainable and inaccessible site, simultaneously a site of fantasy, livelihood, and frustration that they look to for reconciliation and settlement. The analysis of the populations present at each of the cities in following chapters’ case studies will look at how different members of this population come to engage with and leave the city, how they choose where to invest their mobility, how these decisions get made locally, domestically, and internationally, what factors bracket their experiences of the city and how the diverse members of this population can be placed in relation to one another.
Axes of Variation
In order to disaggregate this population and look for emergent spatial logics coalescing in new bouts of labor mobility, I need to determine on which dimensions they vary so that I can identify clusters of similar actors as well as clearly distinguish between them. In the last chapter,
I argued that mobility and employment were the two main axes upon which the definition of digital nomad could vary. I explored the dimension of mobility in the previous chapter both definitionally and through the network model, showing that contrary to the popular image of the digital nomad, the aesthetic assumption of constant mobility is not generally representative of the population as a whole. Though constant mobility may be the ideal strived for, few achieve it or attempt to beyond the first few months trying to be a digital nomad. Movement instead can be periodic, seasonal, and regional, with most digital nomads moving according to Visa restrictions and seasonal needs between a host of hubs taking shorter spontaneous and touristic trips in- between. The network model also identified the two main types of locales this population directs
181 its mobility toward: global cities and offbeat cities, revealing the role that place plays in parsing out variation within these strands of mobility.
The other dimension of variation I have yet to unpack in full is that of employment. One of the stereotypical assumptions of digital nomads is that they are creative class, highly-educated techies and coders who left high level tech firms and started their own companies or contracting firms, earning high incomes while travelling and working remotely. Digital nomads of this stripe are thought to either a) minimize their amount of working time to enjoy the fruits of travelling, or b) work extremely hard to utilize their new found freedom from the workplace to innovate, disrupt and grow their business. Both of these outcomes hinge on the assumption that digital nomads work remotely for themselves, making high incomes while living cosmopolitan globe- trotting lifestyles. While these types of digital nomads do exist, and are the highly public face of digital nomadism, they are hardly representative of the backgrounds, employment relationships, and work/life conditions faced by large swaths of the broader population. The manner in which different digital nomads relate to their own employment and integrate it into the service of their lifestyle and mobility constitutes a key dimension of variation for beginning to parse through the different ways there are to be a digital nomad.
Being that high educational attainment is normally associated with being able to attain high-incomes and creative class jobs, educational backgrounds make up one of the variables determining where individual digital nomads fall on the axis of employment. In terms of the digital nomad educational backgrounds, a Flexjobs survey confirmed the stereotype that digital nomads are highly educated with 72% having at least a bachelors degree and 33% having a master’s degree (Courtney 2020). A Workers of the World Survey found similar findings, but
182 found more room for those without college degrees, with 14% having high school degrees, 55% having gone to college, 28% having a masters, and 1% having a doctorate (Knudsen & Conaway
2017). From these numbers, I will assume that the educational backgrounds carried by different sectors of the population will influence what type of remote work, or nomadic work, they can grab onto and perform, and thus their particular experiences of digital nomadhood. In terms of what types of remote work are most representative of the sectors that digital nomads are employed in, and thus what educational backgrounds influence access to these different sectors of work, MBO Partners (2018) found that
“Digital nomads work a variety of fields, with the most common professions being creative professionals (writers, designers, editors, content creators, etc.), IT professionals (programmers, developers, etc.), marketing and communication professionals, and those involved in ecommerce. The unifying theme of these professions is they can be done remotely using digital tools and the Internet.”
The common image of digital nomads as IT techies and coders is reinforced, while more room is made across the spectrum of various sectors of employment for both high and low forms of creative class work. The ability to use digital tools and technologies in leveraging work in these sectors may also point to a decline in the status barriers to employment that educational backgrounds have played previously. This can be read as both a result of and a motivator for the digitization of work that makes these remote jobs possible, a search by these sectors for cheaper labor that does not necessarily command as a high a price if it does not require the same high educational backgrounds of agglomeration economy sited jobs.
Another component of differentiation on the axis of employment is the manner in which a digital nomad is employed, whether in a traditional job, self-employed, at a start-up, as an independent contractor, or performing temp service work physically wherever they travel. The
183 Flexjobs survey found that “more digital nomads are employed by a company (35%) than digital nomad freelancers (28%) or business owners (18%).” MBO Partner’s 2019 report found that
“Most digital nomads, 4.1 million (56 percent), are full or part-time independent workers
(freelancers, independent contractors, self-employed, etc.), but a sizeable minority, 3.1 million
(44 percent), report having traditional jobs.” The Workers of the World survey found that 24% of their respondents were employed as freelancers, 22% at their own start-up, 19% by a traditional company, 19% self-employed, 10% worked for a start-up, while 5% were employed in other capacities and 1% were not employed at all. Digital nomads then can be connected to employment in a variety of ways, working remotely for traditional firms serving as a large minority sector of the greater population, with the stereotypical employment relations of digital nomads, like freelancing, working at start-ups, or being self-employed at their own firms, making up a slim majority of digital nomad experiences when taken together. There is also room made for more nomadic forms of work that are not digital or remote, with “other” forms of employment being possible, like work-shares at hostels and farms, seasonal and temp employment, etc. There is also room made for the possibility of unemployed digital nomads who are mainly just travelers or backpackers who may keep an active digital record and account of their travels. The employment relations any digital nomad finds themselves in will have different constraints on their ability to live particular lifestyles, demanding more or less responsibility and allowing for more or less agency, in setting up their own relations of production, workplace, workflow, etcxxxiv.
The type of employment that digital nomads are engaged in will impact what type of lifestyle they are able to practice and pursue, and where they are able to live, and how long. These
184 different connections to employment are also influenced by how much time these remote or nomadic employment opportunities makes up of their lives and livelihoods. The Flexjobs survey found that in terms of hours worked, 70% of respondents worked 40 hours per week or fewer while one-third of digital nomads worked more than 40 hours per week. The MBO Partner’s
2018 Report similarly found that digital nomads are “a mix of full-timers (54 percent) and part- timers (46 percent) and many only do it for part of a year.” These differences in part-time and full-time employment among digital nomads result in wide variation in their income and compensation levels, and thus of the lifestyles they can pursue and the locations they can access.
The Flexjobs survey finds that 18% of digital nomads report making six figures or more and 22% make between $50,000 and $99,999, with the remaining majority of digital nomads (60%) making less than $50,000. MBO Partner’s 2018 Report found that over a third (38 percent) of digital nomads report earning less than $10,000 per year, with one in six (16 percent) earning more than $75,000 annually, though of this 16 percent, 54% are full-time workers and 46 % are part-time workers. Remote work then can produce a wide variety of incomes and economic opportunities which can produce a wide variety of lived experiences, drawing people to the lifestyle for a plurality of reasons, higher incomes being only one motivator to become a digital nomadxxxv. All of these components of variation assembled on the axis of employment allow for the production of a wide variety of mobilities, with some constellations performed by sub-groups of one employment and income variety, and some by another.
With the components of variation underlying the dimensions of digital nomadhood elaborated, I will begin to approach and disaggregate the empty signifier of the digital nomad to encounter the populations living beneath it. By meeting these individuals in the midst of their
185 geographic flight to and away from the city, I will investigate how their life biographies, motivations, and frames for their own mobility and presence in these sites begin to connect the terms of place, employment, and mobility in increasingly distinct ways. The new connections made between these terms will create their own representations of mobility, and the subjects engaged in them, which can be used to identify distinct populations in formation and their relations with one another. To this end, I will begin placing these sub-populations in relation to one another through the construction of place-based analytic and open-ended typologies whose terms I will elaborate on further below. Using these typologies as analytic devices to flesh out this category of the digital nomad, I will argue that the conceptions of self and representations created by these newly chosen connections between the terms of place, employment, and mobility begin to form culturally normative evaluative frames and spatial logics that members of this population encounter while in flight, actively creating them while also being reciprocally shaped back, a process and phenomena I will term and bracket as urban prospecting.
Subjects in Pursuit of the Digital Nomad City
As discussed in the preceding chapters, the digital nomad population is currently estimated at 10 to 100 million, with tens of millions of aspirants waiting to join it its ranks
(Courtney 2020; Levels 2021; MBO Partners 2018), covered by a loose definition that hides more than it reveals. How can I begin to approach and formulate a typology to disaggregate all of the variation lying behind the empty signifier of the “Digital Nomad” and identify its successors?
The answer I provided above was to look for different existing configurations made between the terms of place, employment and self that motivate and actualize the specific forms of mobility encountered in the two major circuits of mobility underlying the spatial displacement of labor.
186 To demonstrate how these terms come together to denote and designate distinct populations that look for different things in the locations they invest their mobility in, and thereby show how a typology can begin to be formed to this end, I will look at the different mobile and productive actors associated with and currently connecting to existing global cities.
Keeping this circuit of mobility to the global city constant, I will ask: how are those connecting to the global city differentiated by what they do (employment), how they see themselves (self- conceptions), and how are these two terms mediated by what infrastructures and ways of life are present in different locations (place). I have already unpacked the various components underlying the terms of the city, mobility, and employment, and now I will begin to demonstrate how these different components are approached and connected by the subjectivity of labor in motion. I will start by looking at the digital nomad subjects who pursue the global city. What are they pursuing and how do differences in what they pursue begin to reveal bases of variation?
Using data from the Global Power City Index (GPCI) on the urban-function and actor- specific rankings of the Global Cities that appeared as destinations of digital nomad mobility in the previous chapter as an example, I will demonstrate how particular locations come to be pursued by specific actors. I will argue that what draws actors to specific places depends on the offerings of the place, and how these offerings are seen by different actors depending on their relation to place and employment, and thus the conceptions of self they carry as a result of their social position in the global production process. I will start by looking at the top Digital Nomad
Cities that appeared on the GPCI (by definition Global Cities) and their function-specific scores underlining what infrastructures and elements they hold. The GPCI “evaluates and ranks the major cities of the world according to their “magnetism,” or their comprehensive power to attract people, capital, and enterprises from around the world. It does so through measuring 6
187 functions—Economy, Research and Development, Cultural Interaction, Livability, Environment, and Accessibility—providing a multidimensional ranking.”xxxvi Table 1 below shows the function-specific scores for the global cities present in the Digital Nomad City rankings presented in the last chapter. These function-specific scores essentially measure whether a city has the infrastructures and global connections that make these urban, or global city, functions both exist as well as successfully exert power on these processes globally.
The function-specific rankings show that some of these Digital Nomad cities specialize or excel in one type of global city function, like Bangkok that scores high in Liveability and its associated indicators but relatively low in everything else; whereas, other cities like London excel in almost every function. These scores reveal that, among Digital Nomad global cities, there is a fair amount of uneven development, but that at the same time these cities are drawing digital nomads in high numbers regardless of their strengths or short-comings. What is it that allows Bangkok and London, on the surface two very dissimilar cities in terms of location and global city functioning, to be the two biggest hubs of digital nomad mobility? My answer lies in the way these functions and material aspects of place are evaluated by different actors depending on the position from which they approach the city and what they hope to get out of it.
188 Table 1
To get at how these functions of place become viewed and valued subjectively, I will take a look at the GPCI’s actor-specific scores for these cities. These actor-specific indexes approach the previous function-specific scores as seen from the viewpoint and attractiveness of 5 different global actors approaching the global city (Managers, Researchers, Artists, Visitors, and
Residents). To create these indexes, the researchers started with these five types of global actors that they believed cities most want to capture and identified their needs first, then used these needs to select the urban function indicators that most applied to themxxxvii. These Actor-Specific
Rankings take into account the subjective conditions bracketing how these different urban
189 functions and their scores are evaluated and produced, providing a bridge for unpacking and evaluating the relationship between the productive units of the global city, its social form, and the labor forces that interact with it. Table 2 below shows the score and rank of each Digital
Nomad global city by actor. These tables can help parse out which of these actors is most drawn to digital nomad cities in general, which cities draw the widest variety of actors, as well as
190 identify how some cities specialize in certain populations over others. This, along with the axes of digital nomad-hood identified in the previous chapter, will help guide the crafting of the typology in the next section.
By starting from the actor type, which in the case of these actor specific scores is derived from
191 their productive and consumptive roles in the global city, I can begin to read what that actor might be looking for in each city that draws their mobility there. From this basis, I can begin to explain how these cities differentially act as hubs of digital nomad mobility based on the type of nomad that is approaching them. Table 2 shows that Vienna functions as a kind of neo-bohemia, ranking high for Artists and Residents, but low for Managers, Researchers, and Visitors. This shows that Vienna draws those who want to live comfortably in the city, while also hosting infrastructures like galleries and low barriers to entry that support artists. Those attached to producer services jobs like Managers and Researchers, on the other hand, might not find their needs met. On the flip side, Singapore ranks high for Managers, Researchers, and Visitors but low for Artists and Residents, showing it functions more as a creative class or purely agglomeration economy style city which supports producer services workers and tourists but is not very accessible or appealing to residents and counter-culture artist types. New York and
London appear attractive to all the types of global actors considered, ranking high and drawing a plurality of different actors to the same space. There are then a few cities which seem to specialize in drawing one type of global actor like Copenhagen which is really only ranked high for Residents and Bangkok which is only ranked high for Visitorsxxxviii. These cities might not hold as broad of appeal across actor types but reveal that certain sub-sections of the digital nomad population might be drawn to certain locations over others.
These actor-specific scores point to the dominant population sub-types that are associated with and attracted to the global cities amongst the broader population of Digital Nomad Cities, speaking to populations formally outside of, but currently being cast into, the in-flux condition of digital nomadhood. I argue that the new urban crisis has made increasing sections of these global
192 city populations become mobile, which in turn has brought all of these mobile populations into sustained situations of convergence and flight that produces the shifting and influx heterogenous groups of actors smuggled in under the empty signifier of the digital nomad. These actors are all drawn to different aspects of the city, each city itself containing and assembling different proportions of these populations based on the different functions they host and the different life possibilities they offer. These populations are distinct in terms of their measurement, but in practice overlap with individuals moving back and forth between these subject positions or occupying multiple positions at once, especially once mobility is induced and taken into account.
The contradictory needs of each competing subject position complicate what these mobile actors pursue in terms of locationxxxix.
One individual can now straddle these subjective standpoints and look at the city through all of them simultaneously and in different proportions. These populations, though definitionally distinct, also overlap and interact in space, influencing each other’s experience of the particular city and space, exposing each other to aspects of the city that help them occupy different positions and change the way they feel about the city. The cities, from this subjective viewpoint, become bounded units, admixtures, and configurations of different populations in various proportions, crafting particular city images that then circulate among the broader population which are strengthened, reproduced, and contested by others who believe the image and come to engage with the city. These processes of circulation and collision with the city reproduce previous populations while also creating hybrids and new subject positions. This space of reproduction and creation, and its product, is the bracketed space of the digital nomad and the spatial displacement of labor. The cultural practices and evaluative logics they generate guiding
193 this mobility and population formation is the phenomenon of urban prospecting. Place-specific typologies can be used to unpack how these logics and subject positions are formed in relation to particular places and the other subject positions they encounter there. I will employ place- typologies to flesh out the shape of these emergent subject positions and place them in relation to each other, distinguishing between these positions based on how they unite the terms of place, employment, and mobility, or rather, the logics, practices and aims of their urban prospecting.
Towards a Typology: The Fragments of the New Mosaic
Before diving into the lifeworlds of this population in-formation in the following ethnographic chapters, I want to clarify and qualify the role that these place-based typologies will play in mediating my approach to urban prospecting and the disaggregation of the digital nomad. To do this, I must first define what exactly urban prospecting is, and then show how place-based typologies work as limited analytic tools for fleshing out the diversity of figures and practices engaging in it. Urban Prospecting can be best understood as the totality of labor mobility let loose by the contemporary urban crisis whose content is the individual pursuit of different futures across inherited socio-spatial and historic conditions. It is an open-ended and in- formation set of fluctuating socio-spatial logics employed by different individuals to pursue a variety of possible futures across an uneven terrain of socio-spatial formations. In the past, employment bracketed what types of places, selves and futures could be pursued. With the decline in the stability of futures guaranteed by employment alone, place and conceptions of self take on an increased autonomy in directing and actualizing future life chances.
194 The plural socio-spatial logics comprising urban prospecting have a shared general logic, a bracketed subjective process by which mobility is put forward as an option for the pursuit of different futures. The form of its calculation can be approached from the standpoint of: (1) The motivation for mobility, the basis for its utilization, whose content is the desired experiences and futures that individuals are pursuing in the wake of the new urban crisis. (2) The terms that have to be managed and juggled to achieve these desires, and hence the reality against which these desires are tested, whose content is the relationship established between place, employment and conceptions of the self. (3) The means of actualizing these futures which lies in how mobility is able to string together these terms to the desired ends. (4) The outcome of this process of urban prospecting and how the result is regarded by the mobile subject, whether they feel fulfilment or frustration, grinning or groaning, towards the experiences of mobility and place they put into action which is measured against the evaluative lens of the success or failure in achieving their initial desires. Urban Prospecting is thus the result of, or process by which, the metrics of place, self and employment are balanced to select where to invest one’s mobility for the realization of future life chances. The general structure of these logics can be used to model individual decision-making tied and contributing to the overall phenomenon of urban prospecting. By placing individual constellations of mobility within this general structure, I can operationalize and model different emergent socio-spatial logics underlying urban prospecting by different types of mobile actors.
From this basis, I can begin to disaggregate the figure of the digital nomad by highlighting sub-groupings of individuals who engage in similar calculations and practices of urban prospecting. By constructing place-based typologies, I can elaborate on the similarities and
195 differences between these groups in formation and flux, placing them in relation to each other according to the intensity by which they favor particular variables over others within this general logic. The typologies I construct in the following chapters will be place-based in order to hold the place variable of these socio-spatial logics constant, while exploring how employment and conceptions of self interact with and set up each place being considered as a destination of mobility. With place held constant, identified groups in these typologies will be put into relation to each other according to the differential weight they put behind the terms of the self versus employment in determining the desired ends of different urban prospecting calculations. The needs of the self versus that of employment stand in for the ideal subject positions of labor versus capital, consumption versus production, forming the poles of variation upon which the spectrum of digital nomad experiences and their urban prospecting calculations form and play out. The more a subject-group in the field privilege’s their conceptions of self and social reproduction over that of the dictates of their employment, the closer they will be placed to the labor end of the digital nomad spectrum. The more a subject-group privilege’s their employment outcomes, whether increased access to job opportunities, clients, and professional peers or even decreased costs of production to maximize their wages and competitive advantage, the closer they will be placed to the capital/firm end of the digital nomad spectrum.
The typologies will then identify different groups based on how they balance these terms in their urban prospecting calculations and place them next to each other on this spectrum between labor and capital. Movements from one subject-position to another represent changes in gradation set by the intensity put behind each of these terms. Far from being mutually exclusive, these typology subject positions overlap, both in terms of the interactions that occur between
196 members of each sub-population blurring and shifting the boundaries between them, but even within the course of individual constellations of mobility. As will be seen in the ethnographic chapters that follow, mobile individuals will start in one subject position, and as a result of their initial bouts of mobility and interactions with other subject positions in place, move and shift into other subject positions in either direction across the gradient of digital nomadhoodxl. The output of these typologies will not be the elaboration of solid and permanent subject formations, but of coalescing, fracturing, and competing urban prospecting logics carried within and between actors that can be approached and utilized in future bouts of mobility depending on the ends being set.
The goal will be to ascertain how the consolidation of these logics into more coherent and dominant frames, discourses, and subjectivities, will shape urban prospecting and the spatial displacement of labor on a greater scale, and how this will impact the places they depart and arrive in.
The Spectrum of Digital Nomadhood: Population Origins and Typology Anchors
In order to begin placing the populations I encountered in both Los Angeles and
Dharamsala on the spectrum of digital nomadhood from the pole of labor to capital, I first need to populate this spectrum with reference groups to compare and contrast my encountered populations with. These reference groups will be pulled from the already existing and studied mobile populations that the emerging population of digital nomads are being drawn from. I hold that the past subject positions and origins of these populations will help shape the initial trajectories of mobility they strive for. These reference groups, placed along the spectrum of digital nomadhood in terms of the weight they put behind concerns of the self versus employment in the pursuit of place through mobility, will serve as the origin points for the
197 construction of the place-based typologies in the chapters to come. They will act as anchors providing a continuity against which the new, hybrid, and recurring conceptions of self and cultural figures emerging out of the spatial displacement of labor can be measured and expressed.
The gradient of digital nomadhood starting from the pole of labor and moving towards the pole of capital moves from the Global Nomad (D’Andrea 2007), to the Neo-Bohemian
(Llyod 2002), to the Urban Nomad (Moretti 2013; Standing 2011), to the Creative Class professional (Florida 2003), to Brain Circulators (Saxenien 2005), to Company Expatriates
(Hindman 2007), to Talented Expatriates (Ong 2007), ending with the entrepreneurs of the small flexible firm (Brockling 2016; Sassen 2001). In addition to the weight put behind the concerns of the self versus employment, movement across the spectrum is also based on the extent to which each population is integrated into the global production process. This is why employment takes on a stronger weight as we move from the ideal types of labor to capital represented by the global nomad and the small flexible firm respectively. I will demonstrate the subjective movement along this spectrum from reference group to reference group by giving descriptions of each population and highlighting what terms would need to shift for someone in one reference group to move to another. This same kind of typologization and spectrum mapping will serve as the method by which I approach the digital nomads I encountered in Los Angeles and
Dharamsala respectively, keeping a careful eye on the terms of movement and fluidity I observed across the gradient. I will begin the mapping of reference groups by starting at one end of the spectrum, the pole and ideal type of Labor. This end of the spectrum is defined by putting forward the subjective needs of the worker and individual first, with concerns over the self
198 (consumption, social reproduction, community, self-actualization, etc.) being weighted heavily above all else.
The ideal type of Labor weights the needs of capital (production, employment, profit maximization, asceticism) low, in its most polarizing instances rejecting them wholesale as detriments to authentic decision-making regarding the future, and at least as necessary evils whose impact on life pursuits needs to be minimized. The reference group closest to this ideal subjectivity type of labor is that of the Global Nomad (D’Andrea 2007), understood as alternativi footloose backpackers who reject the “standard lives” and employment offered to them where they are from. They engage in extreme forms of off-the-map mobility seeking escape and self- discovery above all else. They retreat to far-away places, circulating between tourist locales and remote outposts in countries of the global south seeking “authentic” and “unique” life experiences which they keep afloat by engaging in nomadic and contingent forms of employment. This nomadic employment ranges from work-in-kind situations for room and board in the hostels and homestays they call home to low-wage seasonal employment they perform while “on the road” or back in their countries of origin saving up money to become mobile again.
Their life on the road constitutes their real life of self-exploration, discovery and adventure, whereas their life working or back at home is a means to actualizing their real life. The success or authenticity of their lives is measured against the ever-present prospect of “selling out”, or essentially giving up on radical pursuits of the self for stabile lives spent in one place in the service of a boss.
When a Global Nomad gives up on the radical, flexible, and unstable pursuit of self- across vast geographic space and decides to settle down in one place while still trying to
199 maximize their own self-actualization and live lives alternative to the mainstream, they move to the next position on the spectrum, that of the Neo-bohemian (Llyod 2002). Eponomous of the residents of Richard Llyod’s Neo-Bohemia, Neo-bohemians choose to invest their mobility for similar reasons as global nomads but are not necessarily footloose, pursuing alternative life experience within a city (generally within their own region or country) as opposed to across vast geographic space. While some may come from the Global Nomad population, others come to the
Neo-bohemian population first, with both populations generally pursuing these lifestyle mobilities after rejecting the lives and places they were raised in. It is movement away from the hometown to the city and what it represents, the city as site for the possibility and realization of many types of selves and experiences, that draws members of this population there. Neo- bohemians are concerned with cultural consumption and authenticity generally realized by living with and being a part of artistic and counter cultural communities in specific urban neighborhoods invested in making a scene. These alternative enclaves and their residents seek to make places of marginality and alterity separate from the city ordered according to needs of the self, but are themselves caught within the requirements of city living which demand that neo- bohemians pay rent and engage in employment to provide the rent. They take up service sector jobs, or integrate their creative production into the service of firms, as a necessary evil in order to get by. They view the sale of their labor as a necessary sacrifice to be minimized in order to live the lives they want, and turn even these employment relations into opportunities to craft, realize, and sell their identities. They maintain a boundary between the pursuit of their own authenticity versus “selling out” similar to that of the global nomad, but one more accommodating to the realities of employment while always striving to put it in service of the self.
200 While the Neo-bohemian is identified and bounded by movement to the city in pursuit of self-actualization and community, the ability to pursue authenticity above all else is a privilege that many cannot afford to put ahead of simply gaining a foothold in the world. Those who move to the city simply to gain the opportunity for economic stability and decent life-chances constitute the next reference group on the spectrum: the Urban Nomad (Standing 2011). Urban
Nomads, like their Global Nomad and Neo-Bohemian counterparts, reject the lives offered them in the places they grew up, but for largely economic as opposed to cultural reasons. They find themselves growing up and coming of age in rural and suburban areas on the economic downswing, places hit hard by deindustrialization and disinvestment, leaving them with a dirth of good stabile jobs and life chances. Standing’s Urban Nomads are generally young people starting out in the world, youth facing increased conditions of precarity, saddled with high-debts and horizontal job prospects, who do not have the means to reproduce themselves unless they move to the city. The city acts as a font of economic opportunity, a way to stay afloat and put the possibility of upwardly mobile futures back on the table. For those Urban Nomads who came to the city primarily for economic reasons, it is not that the cultural offerings of the city do not hold an appeal, but that they cannot form the primary end in their lives yet since they can barely maintain a foothold in the city to begin with. Many in this population come to the city with high hopes to find their way into existing career hierarchies that could take them upwards, with some actually making it, while others only find low-wage service work that barely maintains their tenancy in the city. Urban Nomads overlap with, and are in many cases indistinguishable from,
Neo-Bohemians, the difference being a matter of degree and of long-term experiences and outcomes. Like Richard Llyod (2002) wrote of Neo-Bohemia, the promise of the scene that continues to draw new residents lies in the existence of a few successful creative types who
201 attract continuing aspirants, whereas most of those who come to the scene over time end up failing by not “making it”. Those who do not make it find themselves, after a few years, stuck in low-wage and horizontal employment, being priced out of the neighborhood, and struggling to keep their foothold in the city, putting the needs of employment forward out of sheer necessity.
The movement to the reference groups beyond the Urban Nomad takes us across a threshold and boundary on the spectrum between Labor and Capital where the ends of the Self versus Employment begin to function more equally and find themselves in increased competition and contestation. The next reference group on the spectrum is that of the Creative Class professional (Florida 2002), which presents itself as an outgrowth of Neo-bohemians and Urban
Nomads who “make it” while in the city. Their success lies in their ability to connect themselves to industries and vertical career hierarchies that make them upwardly mobile and desirable across competitive urban labor markets. Creative Class professionals perform similar types of labor as
Neo-bohemians but act more intentionally to guide themselves into stable career hierarchies to move upwards in terms of wages, benefits, and positions. They access these increased life chances by competing on inter-urban labor markets between cities who are trying to attract them.
While these life-chances tied to employment and further integration into global city producer services sectors puts these creative class professionals in a position to engage in inter-urban mobilities, the final decision of where they come to invest their mobility hinges on the consumption enclaves and amenities offered by the cities competing for their labor. Low barriers to entry, diversity, cultural consumption, and all the hallmarks of neo-bohemia become important assets that cities need to entice this group to its boundaries, important place-based resources that make the labor and social reproduction of this group possible. Though terms of the self, such as consumption and lifestyle, play a role in the geographic decision-making of this group, the pre-
202 requisites for engaging in this form of mobility do put career, employment, and production first, and these other aspects second in evaluating place and ultimately in directing their mobility. The long-term balancing of these terms is variable however, depending on the level of fit and contentment that creative class professionals feel in their current labor market positions, careers, and lifeworlds. Setbacks in employment can lead to compensation found in the search for self and fit in consumption and place-based communities, and vice versa, driving them in different directions on the spectrum.
An adjacent, and both precursor and successor, group to the creative class professional is that of the Brain Circulator (Saxenien 2005). Brain circulators can be Neo-bohemians and Urban
Nomads who seek to bolster their life chances and ability to connect to existing career hierarchies by moving domestically and internationally for educational and professional opportunities that make them competitive for creative class employment. They can also be creative class professionals who feel their life chances being stymied and move beyond the boundaries of their original city and nation to increase their potential to attain higher level career opportunities looking to boost their chances of moving up various career hierarchies both abroad and at home. Brain circulators are most visible in terms of global south labor movement to the north for educational purposes and career opportunities in western firms to raise their profiles if they want to return home, Non-Resident Indians being a primary example. Brain circulators are not however limited to the internationally mobile but also comprise those engaging in domestic mobility towards similar ends. This bracketed pursuit of increased life-chances through skill acquisition and travel experiences forms the foundation putting Brain Circulator mobility forward. Due to the ends of place being dictated by the educational or employment opportunity arising from a rejection of where one came from and a comfort with even international mobility,
203 the place set forward can also be pursued secondarily for its uniqueness and the types of experiences it makes possible. An important caveat to this type of mobility is that it is engaged upon and supported at the individual level, a risk and gambit that this bout of mobility will produce the desired ends. If the bout of mobility does not produce the desired ends, or in anticipation of the possibility that it does not, the Brain Circulator also approaches these bouts of mobility from a liminal perspective, as an opportunity to do something different in their lives before returning to where they came from, or an end in itself, the future unknown. The ambiguity of the ends of this type of mobility can carry brain circulators towards the creative class if their gambles are successful, and towards the Neo-bohemians and Global Nomads if they are not.
Moving to the next reference group beyond the Brain Circulator takes us across the other end of the fuzzy boundary where the terms of the self versus employment are in competition.
The Company Expatriate (Hindman 2007) group begins tilting urban prospecting calculations in the direction of employment in two respects by (1) surrendering their locational choices over to needs of the firm, and (2) becoming further integrated into production process and thus the subjectivity of capital and the firm. Company Expatriates are Urban Nomads, Creative Class professionals, and Brain Circulators who have successfully attached themselves to careers within large firms who have hit the wall of career hierarchies within the place-based branch of the firm they are located in. The boundaries of the firm dictated by its location within the multinational corporation globally, and thus the city/nation they are in, form the barrier to their career advancement, with vertical movement in the firm only possible if one is willing to engage in a geographic change. Company Expatriates are those who allow the firm to send them to another location to achieve the next stage in their career life, the needs of the firm dictating where they come to live and the corresponding set up of their lives. The firm sets up the terms of their
204 mobility and place location, often but decreasingly arranging and covering relocation costs and decisions, while Company Expatriates just choose to be mobile, saying yes or no to the career opportunities the firm presents. Once they decide to be mobile, they are moved domestically and internationally, to fit within the production chain, the space of the firm becoming dominant in their lifeworlds as they leave behind families, friends, social networks, and even familiar cultures and languages. Their social lives often come to rely mostly on the co-workers they encounter in their new locations and the nuclear family they drag along, left afloat and unmoored wherever they land.
The goal of this type of mobility is to grind out in the new position with the hope that they could return home or to a location of their choice once they make it up the career hierarchy again, a lofty goal that is all but guaranteed, with many Company Expatriates hitting the wall again in their new location. They compensate for the agency they gave up in choosing where they live by making the most of their new locations, engaging in unique forms of cultural consumption, establishing new social networks, and attempting to carve meaning out of the lives employment set up for them. This allows Company Expatriates to behave like Global Nomads,
Neo-bohemians, and Brain Circulators, in the sites of their relocation, to make life there worthwhile, but also sets up these outcomes, as well as Creative Class professional lifestyles, as potential offshoots and life choices depending on the success or failure of these Company
Expatriate forms of mobility. Success again is defined by whether these bouts of mobility move these individuals up their attendant career hierarchies and then return them home or to a location of their choice, an end that, like with Brain Circulators, is ambiguous and unknowable.
205 Failure can push individual movement to group mobilities down the spectrum towards pole of labor, while success can reinforce giving oneself over to the needs and dictates of the firm. The latter result of success carries mobile subjects towards the next reference group of the
Talented Expatriate (Ong 2007). Talented Expatriates can be viewed as Creative Class professionals who engaged in brain circulation, or were Company Expatriates, who successfully attained high levels of income, consumption, and choice in relation to their mobility, some of whom are actively pursued by their home countries to come back representing the tail end of successful brain circulation. The Talented Expatriate represents a difference in degree from the
Company Expatriate, one for whom career mobility was successful, having attained a high enough status in the firm and their sector of employment to determine more directly where they can invest their mobility. This increased agency comes about from both their increased labor market power due to successful skill acquisition and career experience as well as the increased incomes and assets they bring with them. Aiwah Ong (2007) writes about how these Talented
Expatriates are footloose and global, with a Pied-a-Terre foothold in multiple cities located within global elite enclaves catering to their productive and consumptive needs. Their labor has also moved up the “skilled” division of labor, entering management and organizational functions that require networking and interaction with clients and workforces globally, driving their need to be present in multiple places. As representatives of these firms, or as contractors, entrepreneurs, or heads of firms in their own right, they have the ability to decide where to bring their skills and workforces, and the considerable corporate and personal assets they wield, which causes different cities and nations to compete for their presence. They come to approach place for investment both from the perspective of their own personal mobility but also from that of their firm and of their own capital in asset form. They must weigh the pros and cons of their
206 locational choice according to the dictates of comparative advantage, where lower labor costs, tax breaks, investment opportunities, government provided infrastructures, etc., are in play. The personal and self-directed outcomes of their mobility take a back seat here in picking their destination; but, in many ways their personal ends are furthered exponentially more compared to preceding populations. Talented Expatriates can and must circulate between a number of locations who all give them something back in the form of competitively high levels of consumption that their increased incomes and market positions open up to them. Their mobility and urban prospecting calculations increasingly come to resemble capital mobility more than labor mobility, with lifestyle enjoyment and self-actualization guaranteed wherever they go.
Moving beyond the Talented Expatriate takes us to the end of the spectrum of digital nomadhood, bumping up against the extreme pole of capital and the firm, represented by the ideal type of the Entrepreneur and the small flexible firm of the agglomeration economy
(Brockling 2016; Sassen 2001). This ideal type is the urban prospecting calculation purified of concerns of the self, where the perspective of the firm and the logic of capital becomes total and personified in the figure of the entrepreneurial subject. There is a real question of whether an individual can ever actually occupy this position purified of their own subjective concerns over the life world, but this is the end that neoliberal discourses on homo oeconomicus and the entrepreneurial self strive to create. This subjectivity is the model that firms are supposed to hold themselves to, with small flexible firms and large corporations at their highest levels of decision- making being expected and required to reduce all final decision-making outcomes to simple rational cost-benefit economic calculations. In the age of capital mobility, and now labor mobility, geographic and mobility investment serve as key spatial fixes and sources of comparative advantage that determine the success or failure of firms in the long-run. Like the
207 Talented Expatriate, but extended to the whole representation of the firm pushed into objective existence, the entrepreneurial subject is responsible for figuring out where their firm will find the best contracts, clients, and employees. They must choose locations for siting the firm’s operations that further their competitive advantage in the sector globally, centered around low costs of labor and production, low rents, but also based on proximity to information loops, innovation, and clients in agglomeration economies. According to Sassen (1994, 2001) and Abu-
Lughod (1999), firms operating at this high level must locate themselves in a small handful of cities that have historically developed to the task, global cities in general, but specifically the three most dominant global cities of New York, London, and Tokyo. Choice here, when put down to the pure economic logic of capital, is not choice but an imperative to be located where they need to be, not where they do not.
The spectrum of digital nomadhood from the pole of labor to the pole of capital has now been populated with a host of reference groups that will help me begin the construction and elaboration of the place-based typologies in the chapters that follow. This general typology, as constructed, relies on a limited number of reference groups and relatively rigid population boundaries with circumscribed ways of moving between them. These reference groups and their rigid boundaries, however, have all been shaken and undone due to the advent of the new urban crisis and digitization of labor which has thrown all of these reference groups into flux, fracturing and recomposing them while allowing for new forms of movement across the spectrum. The task of the chapters that follow will be to begin to identify and locate these fractured, recomposed, and hybrid sub-populations of digital nomads that are found in the Global
City of Los Angeles and the Offbeat City of Dharamsala and put them in relation to one another based on the urban prospecting logics they employ. Instead of attempting to recompose a general
208 typology out of the pieces the new urban crisis has left behind, I want to understand the role that place plays in making movements across the spectrum of labor and capital possible. I want to know why certain populations and social groupings in congregate in Los Angeles and Dharmsala respectively, and how these place-based compositions of actors ultimately hold the potential to shift and direct the continuing unbundling and restructuring of production and consumption globally through their mobility.
209
Moving to the City
210 Chapter 4
‘A Social Network with an Address’: Opportunity, Desire and Finding Your Mobile Self in Los Angeles
In the following chapters I will use the framework espoused in the earlier chapter on
Revisiting the Urban Question to describe and analyze the elements of the socio-spatial formations each co-living space is nested within. Each of these socio-spatial formations have different histories that impact and shape the possible connections that can and will appear between production and consumption. I will provide a nested description of each co-living space, its immediate surrounding environment, and the bigger city/regional formation it finds itself in to pull out a plethora of factors that could draw people to the region and give a juxtaposition of the environment as it existed and how it comes to host this new population of digital nomads. I will then move over to the subjective side of this spatial displacement of labor, looking at the specific individuals and sub-populations present in each case and evaluate what draws these people from different backgrounds to the same location, looking for convergence and divergence between both backgrounds, logics for moving there, experiences with the city, and what was gained through mobility invested there.
I will also look at the diversity of attachments to place, employment and self that are engendered by mobility to each of these socio-spatial formations, to the global city of Los
Angeles and to the Offbeat location of Dharamsala. In each chapter, I will chart and describe the place-specific typologies of the sub-populations present in each location, the sub-populations identified and defined by the clustering and similarity in their subjective balancing of the relationships between the terms of place, employment, and the self. I will present how these
211 populations, and the metrics comprising their decision-making and characterizing their different subject positions, are mediated by the location itself and the experiences they bring with them, coupled with the experiences they have in co-living spaces with other members of the broader population. I will argue that these spaces on opposite sides of the world are producing similar, and in many cases over-lapping, spatial logics of mobility investment whose shared and contested metrics result from each cases’ experience of the city as a general construct and their reasons for connecting to or leaving it. These spatial logics guiding and aiding mobility investment, or collective practices of urban prospecting, result from the different circuits of mobility opened up by the new urban crisis and the spatial displacement of labor it has let loose: mobility to the global city and mobility away from it. While each location will reveal variations in the constituent logics and practices of urban prospecting employed there, the differences in the employment of these practices, and the logics that guide them, will be larger within each location than they will be between them.
Introduction
In this chapter, I will pick up where the last chapter left off, moving forward in developing place-based typologies to explore the logics of urban prospecting employed by different sub-populations of digital nomads as they attempt to attach themselves to the Global
City of Los Angeles. I contend that these logics themselves are structured and shaped by the subject-positions of those moving to the city, for whom presence in the global city is an end in itself, conceived of as a site for the realization of future life possibilities that they project onto it.
Once in the city, their expectations of what they expect to find there run up against the actual experiences they end up having, which then become measured against the fantasies of the city
212 that drove them there in the first place. The extent to which they grin or groan at what they find in Los Angeles is shaped and framed by their particular experiences of the new urban crisis, or rather the way they attempt to fit Los Angeles into their longer constellations of mobility let loose by the new urban crisis in general. Outcomes of success or failure become determined by how they individually experience the field of future life possibilities they believe their mobility can actualize shrinking or expanding as a result of their collision with different aspects of the global city in general and Los Angeles in particular. It is in this grinning or groaning, in these multiple and varied collisions with the global city, that I will set out to explore how Global Cities like Los Angeles are being prospected by different populations of digital nomads, teasing out what possibilities and limitations they see lying within the global city, and how the trajectories of their mobility (and the subjective weightings of employment, place, and self underlying them) are changed by the interactions they have with the global city and the adjacent populations they interact with inside the co-living space of the PodShare.
I will be reading the urban prospecting practices and logics of mobility emerging in the space of the PodShare as reactions to the socio-spatial formation of the global city of Los
Angeles under the New Urban Crisis, the crisis itself defined as cities hoarding opportunity but becoming increasingly inaccessible due to rising rents and structural unemployment. The crisis, construed in these terms, limits and challenges what forms of mobility are able to touch the city, calling for ingenuity on the part of actors left outside of its horizons who need to place themselves in a strategic position to access it now for improved life chances. These actors, and hence the subjects of this chapter, are then individuals for whom achieving and maintaining tenancy in increasingly expensive cities, and finding ways to anchor themselves in their social and economic structures, is of primary importance for pursuing these improved life chances. One
213 of the primary challenges they face in connecting to the global city, a cause and result of the new urban crisis, is that the jobs that used to exist that would make accessing and maintaining residency in these unliveable cities can increasingly no longer meet these needs, decreasing the amount of time individuals are able to stay in any given city. This heightens the contradiction that even though it is more important than ever to access urban space to achieve some level of stability or social mobility (Moretti), the opportunities the city holds are less able to help people realize this outcome. People are left to chase disparate opportunities in a tight and horizontal labor market between multiple cities, hoping to find in their constellation of mobility (Cresswell
2010) a city and position in its economic structure that allows them to maintain their tenancy for as long as they can.
It is their lack of a firm tenancy within a revitalizing urban center, either from their not growing up in the city and/or their lack of ability to afford renting or purchasing a home, that makes them uniquely affected by the urban crisis and puts mobility forward as a key strategy in pursuit of their life chances. Even if they are successful in achieving tenancy in these cities, the opportunities they find are of a lower quality than they expected and unable to meet their needs.
As opposed to their parents’ generation where vertical career hierarchies and opportunities acted as strong structures of the future (Sartre 1968) guiding life decisions and mobility, digital nomads are left to find other ways to make decisions about their future, either following it across vast geographic space or introducing alternative metrics and values to guide it.
“In each group, there are ‘grinners’, who welcome precariat jobs, and ‘groaners’, obliged to take them in the absence of alternatives. Among youth, the ‘grinners’ are students and travelling backpackers, happy to take casual jobs with no long-term future; the ‘groaners’ are those unable to enter the labour market through apprenticeships or the equivalent, or
214 competing with ‘cheaper’ old agers with no need for enterprise benefits.” (Standing 2011: 59)
How do they make this condition work? What happens when they fail? And what repercussions does this have for these cities in crisis? The goal here then becomes to investigate and describe how digital nomads are making themselves, meeting the functional needs of the global city, while at the same time imbuing their lives with meaning and carving out space for themselves in the urban social structure. The solutions they produce will be differentially utilized and realizable depending on the particular conditions that the different fragments of this population find themselves in. It is in how these different populations overlap and interact with one another that new practices and trajectories of mobility begin to emerge on micro-scale, that when taken together in aggregate contribute to the larger phenomenon of urban prospecting. Co-living spaces, like the PodShare, act as a window through which to study digital nomads while they are in the midst of geographic flight, looking at the social dynamics and factors that direct and inform this specific geographic labor mobility. I argue that co-living spaces, and the specific practice of co-living, have arisen as a specific response to the needs of the digital nomad. These sites give digital nomads flexible access to high priced real estate markets in “global cities”, while at the same time exposing them to other members of their population.
The PodShare and its Surrounding Socio-Spatial Formation
Nestled in five distinct neighborhoods in the post-industrial city par-excellence of Los
Angeles, with recent expansions popping up in San Francisco and San Diego, lies the outposts of a growing urban network of co-living spaces known under the moniker of the PodShare. These spaces have been erected inside repurposed buildings embedded within several highly desirable but increasingly inaccessible neo-bohemian neighborhoods. These outposts serve the purported
215 role of allowing residents privileged access to these consumption corridors, but access to whom?
These spaces serve, at base, as a low-cost way for mobile populations to achieve tenancy in an increasingly expensive city while also aiming to aid residents foster deeper connections to the city than simple residency. These co-living spaces aim to help residents facilitate the creation of new social networks by serving as a landing pad for entering and embedding oneself in a hard to access city. These spaces are thus networked with a purpose: to make the city of Los Angeles navigable by outside mobile populations, with each resident able to stay at any of the spaces and use their amenities whenever they choose to. These spaces bring together a mosaic of internal domestic migrants, temporary workers, digital nomads, and international travelers.
The Surrounding Socio-Spatial Formation
The founder of the PodShare, Elvina Beck, billed the space as a haven for “digital nomads” (D’Andrea 2007; Hindman 2007; Spinks 2017; Woldoff & Litchfield, Forthcoming), the site comprised of two networked co-living spaces, with the addition of three more being in the planning stages during my visit. The site advertised itself as “a social network with a physical address”, that was trying to “combat loneliness” in the digital age, advocating “access over ownership” (podshare.co). The two sites, one in the Arts District (Darchen 2017) and the other in
Hollywood, were meant to be equally accessible by residents, or as the Elvina termed them podestrians. A podestrian residing at one site was allowed full access to the other site as well. The website billed the space as servicing three primary populations: social travelers, temporary workers, and transitioners. The PodShare allows the podestrians, or urban aspirants, the space and orienting stage from which they can evaluate Los Angeles, and the world in general, according to the life chances and experiences it makes possible. The socialization within
216 this plug and play community provides and creates an emergent discursive global urban map marking the locations by which these needs and desires can be best fulfilled. As opposed to dominant trends in the past, where the location of employment determines where one resides and invests their mobility, the opposite state of affairs is beginning to emerge where the place itself determines whether one seeks residency and employment there.
The emergence of such a networked co-living space points to the growing need for spaces and infrastructures that allow for this type of mobility to take hold and flourish. In order to understand the myriad ways in which the infrastructure of the PodShare meets and reacts to the needs of this population, it is necessary to situate it in relation to its surrounding socio-spatial formation. I will begin by looking at the neighborhoods that the locations of the PodShare are embedded in. By parsing out how the PodShare’s fits within Los Angeles in general, and the Arts
District/Downtown LA and Hollywood in particular, I can begin to tease out how the features of its surrounding socio-spatial formation both contribute to the growth of this specific digital nomad concentration, as well as how the PodShare itself, and the residents it brings to it, builds on the local processes already in play in its surrounding environment. I will show that the
PodShare attempts to create neo-bohemian plug and play communities that adapt themselves to fit their underlying neighborhood location, providing its mobile residents with a novel ease of access to these locales in a discursively non-touristic “local way”. I will then move on to describe how these novel types of access to the city, and the engagements with place, production, and consumption they make possible, are fit into the constellations of mobility of different digital nomad sub-populations and mobilized to meet different ends.
217 The Global City of Los Angeles
Los Angeles sits in a basin between the Pacific Ocean to the West and the San Gabriel
Mountains to the East with the Mojave Desert forming a settlement boundary beyond them. The coastal area of Los Angeles was originally settled by the native Tongva and Chumash tribes and then colonized by the Spanish Empire in 1542.xli It remained a sparsely populated area until the establishment of the Franciscan Mission San Gabriel Archangelxlii and the adjacent Pueblo de
Los Angeles that would become the elementary site of later Los Angeles in 1781xliii, remaining a small ranch town on an arid plane far from fresh water with a population peaking at 650 in
1820xliv. The Pueblo became a part of New Spain/Mexico after its achieved Independence in
1821, and then switched hands again becoming a part of the United States at the end of the
Mexican-American War in 1847. It’s location on West Coast between the capital of gold and finance north in San Francisco and Mexico to the South, along with the heavy influence wielded by nascent industrialist Californians, helped it acquire important stops and junction points for the
Southern Pacific Railroad in 1876 and the Santa Fe Railroad in 1885xlv. This marked an important moment in developing infrastructure that would tie the city into the innerworkings of the national division of labor. This role of importance was further cemented by the prospecting and discovery of oil in and around the city in 1892xlvi. The oil rush would increase the population of Los Angeles to 102,000 by 1900xlvii, as well as make California the nation’s largest producer of oil accounting for one quarter of global oil production by 1923xlviii. This large population growth put strain on local fresh-water resources that could not sustain growth beyond this pointxlix. To meet these needs, a massive water infrastructure project was developed on an industrial scale to bring potable water down from the Owen River in the Sierra Mountains hundreds of miles to the East, culminating in the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913. This project
218 guaranteed the water-resource base for the assured continuation of urbanization and metropolitan growth fueled by the found capital of the oil rush well into the 20th Century.
The growth of Los Angeles from a railroad junction and oil field to the global metropolis of today continued from this point as a project carried out by an initial push of capitalists and industrialists locked out of opportunities in New York and Chicago pushing out West to make a name for themselves (Abu-Lughod). The first administrations of Los Angeles engineered itself to catch these mobile movers and shakers by creating an “open shop” environment where the strict labor regulations and counter power of labor unions would not be allowed to operate, guaranteeing a cheap and pliable labor force far away from the mediating arm of the federal government on the East Coast (Davis). Furthermore, they loosened zoning regulations that made it so land could be used for almost any purpose without fear of regulation. They also worked to mine the naturally shallow bays of Santa Monica and Long Beach to catch the international trade coming from San Francisco and heading out across the Atlantic. To capture labor and investment, the original growth coalitions of industrialists and capitalists investing in the project of Los Angeles set out an impressive and intensive booster campaign, early casting Los Angeles as an agrarian paradise offering perfect weather and a bountiful coast. Utilizing this perfect image of the city, original land-owners and speculators began subdividing up worthless strips of land, planting non-native palm trees all around, and selling them to masses and masses of midwestern carpet-baggers and retirees who sank all of their savings into the land. This same image of splendor and easy living, as well as the open shop labor conditions, drew the growing film industry out from New York on the promise of perfect sunny skies for shooting throughout the year and a diverse assemblage of environments that could stand in for sceneries and locations
219 around the globe. The broadcast and cultivation of this utopic image of Los Angeles as site of
Eden and culture was cemented by the merging of Hollywood, and its ten major movie studios, with Los Angeles in 1910, constituting eighty percent of the world’s film industry by 1921l. In
City of Quartz, Mike Davis describes how this sunshine image of the city acted throughout its history as a foil to the noir seediness that lurked behind it: the empty naked power grabs, fraud and violent autocracy of the industrialists, oil men, studio heads and politicians caught up in corruption and newsprint scandals driving average people and workers brought west in pursuit of their dreams into broken and tragic existencesli.
This celluloid image of the city has had lasting power, drawing out capital, labor, federal investment and industries to Southern California from the early 20th century onwards. The money generated by the film industry was able to stave off some of the economic losses of the great depression, leaving the capital and labor base of Los Angeles in comparatively better shape than much of the country. This positioned it to become a leading center of wartime manufacturing during World War II, with the defense industry moving into Southern California bringing with it large scale capital investments, federal funding and contracts, and the movement of large finance to the city, leaving it with one of the most powerful manufacturing industries of the 20th Centurylii. It also became a world leader in agricultural production in the 1930s and
40sliii. These developments worked to destabilize the role of San Francisco as the primary finance hub of the West Coast and cemented Los Angeles’ status as a global city. Its advantageous positioning from the depression through WWII put the city in great shape to reap the benefits of the post-war boom in the US. The capital increases coming from the defense, manufacturing and agricultural industries were put in the service of the mass expansion of the
220 highway system which worked to carry suburbanization and its attendant housing and consumption infrastructures further into the valleys beyond Los Angeles proper, expanding up and down the coast. This suburbanization proceeded along similar lines as the initial parceling out of Los Angeles itself, with limited zoning policies and large-scale land speculation leading to the mosaic fragmentation of housing and industrial tracts being placed on top of each other.
Contested land uses and growth on this level sprawled out along the highway system in all directions from the city, creating a poly-nucleated urbanism that Los Angeles urban sociologists would come to refer to as L.A. School Postmodern Urbanism (Dear, Soja). L.A. School urbanists argued that this fragmented parceling out and ownership of land free from zoning and central authorities made Los Angeles a perfect model for the forms of investment characterizing the switch to the flexible mode of accumulation, producing this historically specific mode of urbanism which could not be assimilated to the Chicago School concentric ring urbanism reminiscent of industrial epochs of capital. Culturally, the L.A. School argued that flexible accumulation created mosaics of segregated privatopias that constituted worlds of their own, linked more by highways and the scale of the car than by any neighborhood.
All of these historical developments have led to the production of contemporary Los
Angeles as an “alpha” world and global cityliv, a hub of privatopias and the culture industry, its celluloid-image as lustrous and powerful as ever. Today, Los Angeles has an estimated population of 3,979,576 as of 2019lv, making it the first largest city in the State of California and the Second in the United States, with a land area of 502 square mileslvi and a population density of 8,485 per square milelvii. Los Angeles’ dominant industries are spread across both the industrial and information/service economies, the former made up of the international trade,
221 aerospace, technology, petroleum, apparel and transportation industries, and the latter tied to tourism, entertainment, fashion, finance, law, healthcare and telecommunications industries. Los
Angeles is the largest manufacturing center in the US as well as the nation’s largest portlviii. It has also been ranked the 6th most competitive financial center in the US, and 19th globallylix. As of 2017, Los Angeles had an annual GDP of $1 Trillion Dollarslx, making it third-largest city by
GDP in the world. Los Angeles continues to be a pre-eminent site for opportunity and investment, from both the perspectives of capital and labor.
Los Angeles’ real estate and rental costs have been growing drastically over the last decade, belying the emergence of the new urban crisis and creating the terrain on which digital nomads are attempting to connect to the city. According to the LA Almanac, at its low after the great recession to today, the median price of a single-family home in Los Angeles County has gone from $377,779 in 2011 to $720,604 in 2020lxi. Los Angeles has the 5th highest median home price in the nation of large cities with a population over 350,000, with a 68.6% increase in home prices from 2010 to 2020lxii. In terms of renting, as of 2019 Los Angeles is the fifth priciest city in the nationlxiii. The median monthly rent for a one-bedroom unit in L.A. is $2,250, with that of a two-bedroom unit being $3,030lxiv. The average rent in the city is $2,527, a 65% increase since 2010. This rental increase hits the city especially hard when you consider that 60% of the Los Angeles population is comprised of renters, the city having the 19th highest rate of renters nationally. These increases in prices are not being made up for by increases in incomes, with the L.A. median household income only growing by 36% to $64,036 over the same ten-year periodlxv. These rental increases are tied to the large increases in the city’s home prices, the latter preventing many residents from purchasing homes, driving them into renting. Both of these large
222 increases in housing costs are driven by a lack of supply, with the executive director of the
California Rental Housing Association explaining that “The supply of homes for both sale and rent has not kept up with the demand…you need enough places for people to live. When there isn’t enough … that increases pressure on the cost side” lxvi. Los Angeles developers have attempted to meet this demand, constructing 98,000 apartments over the last decade, the fifth most new constructions in the country, but still flag behind the demandlxvii. It is this condition and circumstance that forms the backdrop for understanding the emergence of the PodShare’s various locations throughout the city, and the populations I encountered within them. I will now provide a brief overview of the PodShare’s locations and the neighborhoods they are embedded in. I will then tell the story of how the PodShare started, describing the ends to which its housing model has been put, and ultimately how it has captured a very specific compilation of the overall digital nomad population.
The Arts District/Downtown LA Location
To reach the DTLA PodShare from LAX, a podestrian jumps on a $9 FlyAway bus to Union
Station riding on Los Angeles’ storied congested five-lane highway landscapes, moving from
LAX past the infamous “Boyz in the Hood” neighborhoods of Crenshaw and Inglewood contained behind trenched concrete walls on either side of the highway. The flat, single/2-story buildings crammed together on either side of the high-way give way to the postmodern glass buildings of the Staples Center, LA Convention Center and Windows HQ as the bus gets closer to downtown and the empty events-only physical spaces that denote the start of Los Angeles’ space of flows approached from this direction. Getting closer to its final destination, the bus passes the media-familiar sites of the Geffen Museum of Contemporary Art and the Metropolitan
223 Detention Center that graces the cover of Mike Davis’ City of Quartz representing the logic of privatized and carceral Los Angeles urbanism carried to its extreme. The Flyaway bus drops riders down at Union Station, the convergence of Amtrak and Metrolink lines providing access to outlying Southern California as well as the blue and red Metro lines connecting them to the rest of the city. Podestrians can grab an uber or a cab from here or begin the fifteen-minute walk across the 101 freeway to the PodShare.
The PodShare’s Arts District location lies southeast of Los Angeles City Hall, across the 101
Freeway from Union Station, east of Little Tokyo and few blocks north of Skid Row. It is located in the non-descript “Newbury Lofts” building, itself three blocks away from the recently opened Little Tokyo/Arts District stop on Gold Line, and just on this side of the bridge which separates the Arts District from East Los Angeles. The urban landscape surrounding Newbury
Lofts is scattered with various attractions, landmarks, and businesses including the Metropolitan
Detention Center, the Geffen Museum of Contemporary Art, the Arts District Brewing
Company, the Japanese-American National Museum, the Hauser & Wirth Gallery, the Southern
California School of Architecture and the exterior loft set of the television series “New Girl”.
These media and creative institutions are joined by the presence of city government and administrative buildings like the Metro Central Instruction, the City of Los Angeles Personnel
Department, and the Department of Public Services. In addition to these government buildings, the neighborhood is also populated by a number of non-profits and social service providers specializing in workforce training, substance abuse, and homeless outreach. These institutional centers are cast adrift in an indeterminate field of dead concrete urban space replete with homeless encampments and reclaimed industrial style buildings emblazoned with beautiful murals, with streets covering paved over railroad tracks. Formerly an industrial and
224 manufacturing center, the Arts District has been going through post-industrial urban revitalization efforts, with the area being zoned for new urbanism’s live/work mixed use zoning and benefitting from an increased downtown wide cleaning and maintenance budget (cite). This has led to bouts of investment which has in turn led to some former factories and buildings being revamped into self-described artist spaces and collectives, screen printing shops, hip coffee shops, breweries, and open air art galleries (many of which advertise their services as sets for filming), the foundational institutions of a neo-bohemia (Llyod 2002) guided by creative class logics (Florida 2002, 2003).
The Arts District is spatially adjacent to Little Tokyo to the West which is filled with
Japanese stores and immigrant populations offering food, manga, Japanese pop-culture, cheap clothing and the like. To the North is Downtown LA with its big public buildings and parks including City Hall, the Los Angeles Police Department HQ and court systems, grand park, the
Disney Music Hall and more. It is this environment, the neobohemian space of the Arts District, and the touristic enclaves of Little Tokyo and Downtown LA, that the PodShare seeks exploit, to connect its residents to, providing the local businesses and artistic endeavors with patrons and customers. As such, the PodShare, according to its founder, seeks to plug itself into this neighborhood, to embed itself into this network, not as a space separate from it. It is this logic that guided the way this PodShare location was set up and designed.
The PodShare’s Arts District location is housed within a non-descript post-industrial brick
Loft-style building, a small plastic square bearing the PodShare logo affixed to the brick to the right of a grated metal door being the only indication that the PodShare resided here. While the space is inconspicuous from the outside, it has been developing an increased media presence
225 having been featured on Telemundo, National CBS, Vice Media, etc. The space is separated from the outside world by two key-padded doors. Once inside, you are greeted by two ever- present staff members seated at a welcome desk built out of one pod cluster and a continuous stream of indie music pulsing in the background. The space itself consists of stacks of “Pods”, which are single-serving cubby-holes replete with everything one might need during their stay.
Each Pod has a bed, pillow, blanket, towel, shelf, coat hook, towel bar, a night lamp for after lights out,, a personal fan, TV remote w/ headphone jack, TV w/ Roku, and a message board that the person who stayed in the Pod before you can leave a message on (you do the same when you leave).
There are 18 Pods in total, with 14 of them being slated for individual use, and four containing queen beds which were allowed to contain two people each. These Pods were arranged facing one another with no barriers to privacy, an intentional design meant to enforce social control, disallowing bad behaviors such as drug use, etc. The space also had a kitchen nook, two common rooms, and a bathroom area. The kitchen operates as a common area that has marked community food in both the pantry shelves and refrigerator that residents are free to use and eat, as well as labeled private food storage for each Pod. Residents are responsible for cleaning up after themselves. The common room on the bottom floor is ringed with couches centered around a television outfitted with a Nintendo Wii, streaming capabilities and a central coffee table stocked with board games. This common room serves as a crash pad, a space of casual socialization for podestrians to meet one another and engage in low-stakes interactions.
The staff also sleeps in this common room at nighttime, the space off limits and the door closing when the lights go out at 11pm. The upstairs common room has a long dining/conference table with desktop computers and printers against the wall. The space doubles as a dining room and
226 working area, with the founder and staff completing administrative work and running business meetings up here while also being joined by temporary worker residents on their computers, and other residents eating their meals. The bathroom is co-ed and has two showers and two toilet stalls, each having wood blind, “closet” style doors. The showers are stocked with a variety of both purchased and left behind shampoos, soaps, conditioners and the like up for free use and sharing. Other common use areas include a set of rentable bikes and a charging station, as well as the avenues between pods which were specifically designed to encourage collisions between residents, facilitating spontaneous interaction.
The Hollywood Location
The Hollywood PodShare can be reached from the DTLA location by jumping on the red line at Union Station to the Hollywood and Vine stop, billed on many guidebooks as the historic hub of the music and film business. Leaving the Metro station, you step out directly onto the palm-tree lined Hollywood Walk of Fame framed by the Capitol Records Building and
Hollywood sign in the background. Walking west a few blocks, you pass a number of souvenir stores, improv theatres and training centers, movie theatres and eateries which give way to trendy
West Hollywood bars and clubs as you travel farther down. The Hollywood PodShare lies down a non-descript alleyway just off of the walk of fame and adjacent to the intersection that hosts the
Hollywood Arts University High School and the L Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition. On more than one of my visits to the Hollywood location, I found this alleyway settled by encampments of film crews, catering trucks, and active production headquarters supporting projects being filmed in the surrounding area or connected to the Arc Studios LA recording building next door to the
227 PodShare, putting the media-centric and sensational nature of Hollywood that drives people here front and center in the experience of the neighborhood.
The Hollywood PodShare was actually the first location ever opened that used to host 10 pods but now has been reduced to a grand total of two. Once a full-fledged co-living space on the scale and model of the DTLA PodShare, this location had been forced to reinvent itself due to a change in landlord during its nine-year lease. Upon the building’s change of ownership, the new landlord was uncomfortable with what he viewed as a “hostel” that would bring in socially undesirable types. To accommodate his trepidation, the founders tried to explain that it was a co- living space and not a hostel, leaning into the growing popularity and awareness of co-working spaces to sell their point. The landlord decided he would be more comfortable with it being more of a co-working space, limiting the “hostel” lodging type nature of what it could offer, leading them to pivot its set-up. At the time of my visit, this location had one Pod stack of two pods to the right of the entrance, the bottom pod an experimental murphy bed that could convert to a full standing desk. They wanted to expand this concept to cater more directly to temporary workers and digital nomads who needed a working space just as a much as a living space. Across from this podstack, there was a full-service and sound-proof recording booth with a ladder next to its door leading to a loft bed on top of the booth. There was also a green screen built out of the side of the recording booth with a couch on its other side. The rest of the space was taken up by a co- working area complete with three conference tables and a wall of desktop computers loaded with the latest media production software open for use with an individual use bathroom and common kitchen just off of this area.
228 Overall, the space could host 6 total residents a night, two in the pods, one in the loft bed atop the recording booth, and three on cots the staff pulled out at nighttime. People looking to utilize the space as purely a co-working space while not residing there could pay $15 a day. The staff and founders did admit that they were having trouble finding a consistent client base for this new hybrid co-working set-up due to its location down an alleyway warding off foot traffic as well as facing the competition from coffee shops and straight forward co-working spaces in the neighborhood. They had been attempting to market it better, trying to get casting directors, producers and freelancers to use the space and its creative amenities but with limited success.
This different set-up led to a very different experience of space and social interaction than the
DTLA location, the smaller population base leading to slightly closer relationships and interactions between staff and residents, as well more engagement with local Angelenos who came into the space to work or record their music.
The Founding of The PodShare
The PodShare was founded by Elvina Beck, a freelance videographer, who moved to Los
Angeles in 2004 for college. Her experience beginning as a freelancer during the emergence of
Youtube in 2008 exposed to her to the increasing affordability and proliferation of content creation. She enjoyed the new production possibilities this opened and attached herself to the
DIY ethos of this scene realizing that that she could “make an actual income” as a freelancer as opposed to working for someone else. As she gained confidence in her freelancing skills, the sharing economy began taking off with Airbnb specifically peaking her interest in 2009. Coming from the freelancing media production economy in Los Angeles, she saw the emergence of
Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, Task Rabbit, etc., as signs of a greater shift in economic trends moving from
229 the freelance economy to the sharing economy to the gig economy and so on. She saw the novelty of these trends, of people opening up their homes, cars, etc., to strangers as opening up the opportunity for people to “create their own wealth” by disrupting previous industries. She believed that the sharing economy was making things more accessible “like whether it is cars or like music right? We went from cassettes to DVDs to streaming music. I'm just like, OK, so this is kind of like a trend, everything's going in the cloud, right? I started thinking if everything is becoming accessible why is housing still this archaic thing? That’s how [the idea of the
PodShare first] developed.”
Though the idea to start the PodShare was originally sparked by wanting to disrupt previous housing models, Elvina specifically wanted to start by disrupting the travel experience.
“I looked at the market and home sharing was the thing, but I found that home sharing was really inconsistent like as a host and then as a traveler”. She applauded the type of travel Airbnb made possible, this notion of “traveling like a local”, while also noting its limitations and pitfalls in achieving this end. She thought that first of all, your travel experience of a city was deeply inconsistent depending on what Airbnb or homeshare you stayed in, even if they were in the same building. Secondly, though your homeshare might be embedded in a residential neighborhood, you do not experience the city like a local since you are on your own individualized travel tour, not interacting with locals or other travelers to actually see the city from this perspective. This later concern formed the center of Elvina’s ethos for the PodShare, solo travelling made into a distinctly social and local experience. For Elvina, solo travelling had a value in itself, allowing you to do what you want to do without having to compromise with other people, while also forcing you to step outside your comfort zone and meet new people to
230 explore the city with. It is this experience that she wanted to redefine, almost creating a space where people feel like they are moving to the city for the first time and encountering similar others. She thought this type of service would also fit the market need for what she considered to be a lack of affordable options for social travelling in the US. The key question became: “How do you create an affordable social travel experience for solo travelers? Affordable though is like the keyword, I want everyone to be able to try and kind of grow from the experience of traveling by themselves.” Elvina decided that she wanted to create a space that facilitates this affordably for solo travelers while also creating a social experience following a coffee-shop model where people know what they are getting. Elvina argued that you had to be able to see the trends 5-10 years down the line and exceed them before the domain was filled with competitors, connecting her move to instances of technological change spurring the creation of new markets like the internet bubble, etc., where pioneers in the space fought it out until one became dominant, ultimately shaping the trend. She believed the trend of co-living was ripe for this moment and that the PodShare could tap into and shape it.
To disrupt the travel experience, you had to know what housing models you were reacting to. The closest existing model for the social travelling experience Elvina wanted to create was a hostel, a model that had large recognition abroad but not in the US where it has a attained a bad name. She was adamant that the PodShare would be an American brand and she had to figure out how to translate the hostel travelling experience that American’s partake in when travelling to Europe but make it approachable back in the US. “It's very ironic because
Americans will hostel internationally, but they won't do co-living or shared spaces in America.
They’ll spend six weeks in Europe in hostels but then when they travel to Chicago they choose to
231 stay in a hotel or an Airbnb.” Elvina held that hostels in the US have a negative image, being associated with bed bugs, scary movies and socially undesirable types, whereas they are viewed as great things in Europe and part of the culture. The goal became to redesign the idea of the hostel to fit into the American experience. She looked for precursors to co-living or shared space residency in other parts of the American experience, like growing up in a family home, going to kindergarten and summer camp, going away to college and living in dormitories, and other life- course moments where you learn to share space and resources. The question became “how do we get back there or tap into these experiences again”? The hostel model would not do, Elvina explaining that hostels are often large warehouse-like dormitories filled with anonymous strangers offering a very serendipitous, atomized and closed off experience. Socialization happens there but almost in spite of the set-up, not because of it. Elvina saw the opportunity arising to reinvent the social travelling experience now along the lines of a different housing model more geared to the task, an open space facilitating socialization and community along communitarian lines designed to facilitate maximum collisions between residents.
With a housing model and the end of social travelling figured out, the question became what was Elvina offering the market? How would she make this model fit into and meet local conditions? How would she site her locations to add to and expand the travel experience? Elvina sought out to make a “social network with a physical address where if you stay at one it's like being in the same building with everybody else, but actually it's better because you get to explore local neighborhoods”. The idea would be to site people in local neighborhoods that they could get to know, both touristy and more residential, providing them with a “plug-in space” to the city. Access and affordability were key, the terms that needed to be balanced which would guide
232 where they planned on siting future locations as well as the type of access they made possible.
They asked themselves what their target customer base would want, “the person that doesn't require a lot of that has the ability to kind of run around, like where do you call home?” She believed that not forcing residents into firm housing commitments was key, offering them flexible housing and lengths of stay. She did not want to monopolize their experiences or trap their mobility, comparing this shift to flexible accommodation to when cell phones stopped requiring annual leases. She also believed that the affordability they offered their residents would help people save money that they could spend back into the local economy, benefitting the neighborhoods the PodShare would call home. “That's how the PodShare came about. Our logo is a Chevron of the ‘share the road’ sign on a suitcase that represents home." This led to the first site opening in Hollywood with 10 pods in 2012, achieving an average of 94% occupancy at the end of its first year. She found that people kept coming back, they extended their stays, blogged about, and even got tattoos of the logo inspired by the memorable experiences of community they found there. For Elvina, “the market validated the PodShare” and the question became where to go from here. She decided early on that she wanted to keep her commitment to affordability and access, refusing to take outside funding in order to keep this commitment and build the PodShare slowly and sustainably herself like a “mom and pop” shop.
As the PodShare grew and Elvina saw the populations she was reaching and how they were using the space, she began to connect what she was offering the city to broader economic trends she saw occurring nationally, specifically the housing crisis. She reflected that she saw her founding of the PodShare as very much taking place in the wake of the 2008 recession which was bad for many Americans. When she started the first PodShare location in 2012, she saw the
233 economy bouncing back in the form of commercial and residential real estate prices but also saw that this growth ironically made top housing markets like San Francisco, Los Angeles and New
York unlivable. She found this ironic in the sense that the country had just got out of a recession, the housing market was bouncing back, but the impact of this recovery was making it so people could not afford homes in places that were recovering quickest. Elvina argued that this unlivability would make it so people would have to “move out of urban settings and more into the ‘burbs, having to commute, which is creating more traffic,” that “in the next 10 years we're going to see [this crisis spread to] the city’s infrastructure because the city is growing a lot faster,” continuing to perpetuate this unlivability. Elvina saw that she had the choice of whether to keep the PodShare mainly a hospitality brand or to pivot and become a source of affordable housing that could help meet the needs of this crunch.
She ultimately shifted the PodShare from the social traveler to the affordable housing model, believing that “In this economy, we have 2 choices: move out of expensive neighborhoods or share more in them. Podestrians choose to come together to afford living by co-living.” lxviii Elvina argued that the PodShare has a life of its own, whoever comes to stay there ultimately impacting the shape it will take in the future. While it started as a travel model and pivoted to housing, these two ends are still being serviced, with the population comprising a mixture of “people who are in town apartment hunting, or here for a job or pilot season, or crashing for one night on vacation”. This mixture of podestrians ranges from transients staying the shortest amount of time for one night and longer term guests staying for up to three months.
The shorter-term guests making a lively environment for the longer-term guests while the latter provide a foundation for community and bringing people together. This has produced a variety of
234 positive outcomes, from multiple different podestrians meeting and becoming roommates outside of the PodShare, to a meet-cute that ended with a proposal at the space, to a network of travel friends and backpackers who stay with each other when on the road in the future. These are the end results that Elvina wants to keep producing, hoping to expand the total number of spaces in the network. It took her four years to open three locations and she hopes to have ten more locations in the years to come, both within Los Angeles and outside of it, providing podestrians with “an entire network, a neighborhood bar for beds, that you can really bounce around: say three or four in Los Angeles, one in San Diego or Oakland, San Luis Obispo, then you got the state of California and maybe up the coast to Seattle and Portland, then move from the West
Coast to the East Coast from there.”
Since my visit in the Summer of 2016, the PodShare has more than doubled its existing locations and expanded to the neighborhoods of Los Feliz, Westwood/UCLA, and Venice Beach as well as outside of Los Angeles to both San Diego and San Francisco. The siting of its growing co-living network spaces follows similar logics to the establishment of the original locations, seeking to disrupt the housing market, provide spaces for community formation in the city, and attach people to expensive neo-bohemian neighborhoods at cost. The local neighborhood conditions of each site tweak the base housing model the PodShare employs, attempting to make it match the neighborhood but also the specific needs of those who are attempting to access it.
The Venice Beach location lies in a seaside style-bungalow blocks away from the Venice
Aqueducts and Boardwalk, the sites of the famous pacific-kissed muscle beach and skatepark.
This location has a yard with a volleyball court, ping pong table, grill, and performing area that regularly hosts comedy and music shows open to the whole neighborhood. This site is larger than
235 the others offering 32 pods but also differences in room style, with private rooms and even a conference room “peer space” available for booking. The housing model was experimented on even more in the Westwood/UCLA site where the founders tried out a dorm share model, offering private rooms housing anywhere from 1 to 4 people in dormitory style bunkbeds outfitted with workspaces. The site’s proximity to UCLA would work to capture student overflow or temporary visitors to the university, offering them cheaper comparable residence, while also offering them a more entertaining stay lodging with social traveler types in town to shop in Westwood and nearby Beverly Hills.
The difference in these sites highlights how the physical space and communal living aspects of the PodShare housing model can be utilized for different needs depending on location and population sought. This same logic would guide the establishment of the San Diego and San
Franciso PodShares as they attempted to adapt themselves to local conditions. The founders were aware of the different possibilities this set-up could be put to beyond the needs of podestrians trying to access the city, even submitting a grant/contract application with the City of Los
Angeles and other social enterprise bids to apply the PodShare model to build transitional housing for homeless youth. The dream of this growing network of spaces was not to have the replication of isolated and separate hotel style franchises on a corporate model, but to establish a host of locations that could be accessed and connected by resident activity. The goal was to create a mobile network of housing models that people come back to; after staying at one, they want to stay at all of them wherever they go, even using the locations of the existing network to guide where they want to travel next. The PodShare does not just want to offer lodging, but to
236 encourage and make possible the circulation of their resident-base around the city, and now even up and down the Californian coast.
The Los Angeles Typology: The Mobile Residents of the PodShare
With locations in the Arts District and Hollywood, the PodShare provides residents with quick access to the cultural offerings in these neo-bohemian areas of the city (Llyod 2002), while at the same time exposing them to similar others. The PodShare provides a cheap space in which to both live and work, keeping costs down for its residents by intensifying the land use of the space, and by marketing itself to people who want to live in common with others. This living in common goes beyond a marketing and cost saving technique, becoming in the end what is truly unique about the space. Co-living, as such, serves a variety of different purposes for different populations. In this section, I will begin constructing and elaborating a place-based typology to describe the different populations who resided in the PodShare, attempting to make sense of the particular conditions under which they relate to the city in crisis, and how their co-living practice looked different depending on the differential conditions each of these groups faced. As elaborated on in the preceding typology chapter, I will be place these populations in relation to each other based on how their urban prospecting logics fall on the continuum from labor to capital, from the primacy of concerns of the self versus that of employment, and in the instance of Los Angeles from how integrated they are into the city, from being untethered and mobile on one end of the spectrum to increasingly embedded in the city itself on the other. I will end this section by considering how the practice of co-living is shaped by the space of the PodShare and
Los Angeles itself, and how the practice reciprocally shapes the populations who engage in it.
237 Since it opened, the PodShare has hosted over 5,000 podestrians, a large percentage of them coming from international locations, and most being aged between 18-35. Podestrians can be lumped into three general groups: social travelers, temporary workers, and transitioners. It is important to note that these groups are not all encompassing or mutually exclusive, and in many instances, residents straddle the lines between them. These three groups were identified post facto by the founders and staff to describe the residents coming through the space, categories I found to be generally true and applicable in my experience and fitting within the category of the digital nomad. My observations compel me to mark subdivisions within the social traveler group, as well as add a provisional group: the staff members. Under the social traveler category, I would add the subgroups of gap year travelers and alternativi backpackers. As far as the staff members go, they generally fall under the transitioner category, but can also enter either of the other groups at any time, as well as be considered separately from these groups. They represent a floating group with similar yet unique ties to the space. All of these residents are loosely united by the general conditions of their residency at the PodShare, where the stay costs $45/day, much cheaper than hotel accommodations, and the general desire, or at least willingness, to share space with a multitude of strangers. It is also important to recognize the episodic nature of their residency, an episode that can be either singular or one among many depending on who is passing through the space. I will proceed to typologize the populations I encountered in the
PodShare, demonstrating how these subject positions connect to the reference groups espoused in the last chapter, serving as outgrowths, fusions, and adjacent groups to those that came before formed by their experiences of the new urban crisis. I will move from one end of the labor/capital spectrum to the other in order to describe and characterize how the logics and practices of each subject position flow into one another highlighting what terms would need to
238 shift for someone in one reference group to move to another. From this basis, I will begin to disaggregate the digital nomad subjects who site Los Angeles, and global cities in general, as destinations of their mobility, and unpack how their interactions with the city and each other shape and contest the continued terms on which their subjectivities are formed, impacting their future mobilities.
Social Travelers
To begin my place-based typology of digital nomads in pursuit of the global city, the first circuit of the spatial displacement of labor, I will begin with the group that is anchored closest to the extreme labor oriented side of the typology claimed by the global nomad in the general typology: the social traveler. As mentioned above, the social travelers can be subdivided into two general sub-groups: alternativi backpackers and gap-year travelers. This first subdivision of social travelers fit the bill of what Standing (2011) refers to as the “ ‘alternativi’ or ‘cognitariat’, who live a bohemian existence that trades security for a life of creativity and autonomy…[who] opt out of the pursuit of jobs altogether” (p. 78), an outgrowth of the global nomad population.
These alternativi backpackers were both domestic and international individuals who chose a backpacker lifestyle, their decisions revolving around the ends of being cheaply mobile, hitch- hiking across the country looking for unique experiences and alternative lifestyles. One such example is Aaron, a late-twenties white Australian male, in town to explore before hitch-hiking up to Alaska to “get lost in the mountains”. Aaron took to the space almost instantly, socializing with the staff and other residents within five minutes of arriving, already comfortable with the set-up from living a backpacker lifestyle elsewhere. Many of these backpackers were well acquainted with hostel culture abroad and took to the PodShare quicker than some of the other
239 residents, though acknowledged that the PodShare was a different style of hostel culture, a step above in terms of quality and variety of resident-base. Co-living presented itself to these residents as a cousin to the hostel and backpacker culture they were already a part of, but as
Aaron said, “tweaked in an oddly American way”. The backpackers were generally most concerned with finding the most unique experiences available in Los Angeles. They hit up both the staff and residency base for information on what to do in the area, as well as utilized their virtual backpacking networks (Molz & Paris 2015) they had created in the course of their journeys.
The other sub-division of the social traveler, the gap year travelers, were generally young, international college students exploring the country, passing through before, during or after their tenure in study-abroad programs at American universities. Many of these residents were also taking gap years between schooling and entering the workforce. This sub-population can be approached as a convergence point between global nomads and urban nomads who have neo-bohemian, creative class, and brain circulator aspirations. This group is largely defined by their youth and search for liminal experiences, trying out different life possibilities before committing to any particular path, logic or way of life. Unlike the alternativi backpackers and their global nomad predecessors, while they may engage in extreme and unique types of travel, they have not committed fully to this lifestyle over all other possibilities. They leave themselves open to the experience of travel and the pivots to different social positions and futures it makes possible. Jamie, a white Australian 22-year old female resident from Melbourne serves as a good representative of this “gap year” group of social travelers. Jamie was currently still in school getting her teaching degree but decided to take an “abbreviated gap year from college”, two
240 months, to see as much of world as she could. Los Angeles was her first stop on her transcontinental travels where she would be spending ten days before travelling to Toronto, New
York, and then to a number of destinations in Europe before stopping in Macedonia where she would be seeing family. Jamie was looking to see as much of the different places she was travelling to as she could while making friends and seeing what life was like in each of these destinations. The PodShare provided her with a mass of international and domestic travelers who could tell her where to go in each of the locations she was going to be passing through, and a cast of characters to explore the city with. By the end of her stay, Jamie was looking at the different universities in the area, trying to “suss out” which had partnerships with her school back in
Australia. She was convinced that she needed to return at a later date for a study abroad trip where she could actually try to see what it was like to live here, as well as take advantage of
American educational opportunities. Most of the gap year students had similar stories and ends, here for experiences as well as education, using the PodShare as a base from which to explore different countries, and see what other opportunities existed elsewhere.
Both subdivisions of the social travelers were actively considering what opportunities
Los Angeles, and the rest of the country, could provide for them in the future. Their stay at the
PodShare, and in Los Angeles, representing one stop among many on their constellations of mobility (Cresswell 2010; Sheller & Urry 2006) as they scampered to see as much of the world as possible. The alternativi backpackers were trying to meet a multitude of other people and find unique experiences at the lowest possible price while maintaining a mobile and alternative lifestyle. The gap year students were rushing around and attempting to absorb as many experiences and cultural differences as possible before entering the labor force with the hope that
241 their travels would present them with opportunities to connect to new locations, social networks and employment opportunities while in-transit. They would accept the unique experiences they gained while mobile as a consolation prize if they could not leverage their mobility into increased job and life prospects in a material sense, similar to the rationalizations of neo- bohemian types who never “make it”, carrying them towards the alternativi backpacker lifestyle or simply a life of immobility back where they are from.
While many of these gap-year traveler types could be presented as well-off future creative class aspirants merely taking a break before entering the labor market, for others this mobility was an outgrowth of initial urban nomad types of mobility they engaged in that carried them away from the dearth of life chances offered in their hometowns to the cities in the first place. Kimberly, an 18-year old gap-year traveler born in Brazil but growing up in Ireland, demonstrates how the costs of immobility push forward urban nomad mobilities to the city, whose results lead to further mobilities of the gap-year traveler kind approaching new cities as sources of upward mobility and enablers of increased and varied life outcomes. When talking about home, Kimberly construed Ireland is nothing but cows and farms aside from Dublin and
Belfast, coming from a rural county outside of Belfast. She explained that growing up she feared being trapped in Ireland with the limited scope of future possibilities it offers. She explained that she aspired to manage bands and work in the music industry, a goal that she explains would be impossible to achieve if she stayed at home. When asked if she thought it possible to achieve these ends in Dublin or Belfast, Kimberly deadpan responded that “there is no opportunity in
Ireland…in the UK the only place to go is London.” Knowing this at her core, Kimberly applied to University in London for programs in creative management where she will begin her studies
242 in the fall. Before then, Kimberly is going on a bout of travel over the summer across the US,
Los Angeles being one stop among many with other stops including New Orleans, New York, and other music hubs in North America. She explains she is going to London to attempt to make it in the music scene, but that she is also using her travels to consider other music industry hubs abroad for settlement in pursuit of her future career. Kimberley like the PodShare because it allows her to meet people from a whole bunch of different places, solo travelling itself a form of mobility that gives her the freedom to do what she wants as well as experience the city from the perspective of a future resident. Kimberly’s mobility originates from a urban nomad motivation which is then being filled with meaning by neo-bohemian ends and promises whose potential for fulfilment is being projected on and scoped out in cities along her gap-year tour. Kimberly’s mobility takes us to the fuzzy boundary of the social traveler group, social traveling being more of a means to an end for finding and stabilizing future employment outcomes in different cities up to the task. These pursuits, however, are guided by neo-bohemian logics that respect experience and a certain threshold of authenticity that obscures the urban nomad’s blind pursuit of the city for any type of opportunity.
Temporary Workers
Kimberly’s mode of mobility carries us across the barrier from the social traveler to the temporary worker. This movement from across the digital nomad continuum corresponds with a population turn towards a deeper engagement with the city itself which grows moving forward from the social traveler, to the temporary worker, to the transioner. The temporary workers were generally coming into town for episodic bursts of temporary work, needing a place to stay and plug into the city from. This branch of residents was made up both of seasonal workers in town
243 for temporary jobs, self-employed freelancers using the space to work out of as well as reside in, as well as workers travelling at the behest of their company.
The boundary of the temporary worker was rather loose, also incorporating in elements of neo-bohemian types who were in the city as part of liminal experiences and excursions in Los
Angeles acquiring new skills or using their time in Los Angeles to further their creative projects.
An example of one of these liminal experience temporary workers is that of Miguel, a late twenties early thirties Filipino man who grew up in Hong Kong. Miguel was in Los Angeles for three-weeks to attend an intensive improv comedy training at the Second City Hollywood theatre down the street from the PodShare’s Hollywood site. He spent his weekdays training at the theatre, and his weekends with his aunt and uncle in the LA suburbs. He spent his evenings after class hanging out with other PodShare residents, exploring the city and taking advantage of the little tight-knit community they formed at the space, even going so far as to buy a staff member a birthday cake and thrown them a little party with other residents. His trip to Los Angeles was put in pursuit of learning improv where it was practiced and performed best, constituting an adventure and break from his normal life in Hong Kong, giving his travel more of a purpose than your typical social traveler. He was older than your typical gap year traveler while also at the same time engaging in liminal mobility between moments of his normal life as opposed to the extreme liminal lifestyle commitments of the alternitivi backpacker. Miguel serves as a case of transition between social travelers and temporary workers in that he blurs the boundaries between them. What he is doing in the city is not work per se, but it also stands beyond simple travel, being in Los Angeles for a particular form of skill acquisition and liminal experience that
244 cannot be found elsewhere, put forward by neo-bohemian and global nomad drives but fit into a small liminal time-frame.
While Miguel’s liminal-experience mobility may be seen as a stretch of the “temporary worker” group if improv training is viewed as skill acquisition, the experiences of Matt, a travelling photographer in town for a sponsored art project, reveals the way in which these liminal experiences and creative skills can be used to buoy and support employment and continued mobility. Matt constitutes a social traveler type making the transition over to the temporary worker category, a neo-bohemian turning his social travel into a form of employment, skill building, and career-making. Matt, a designer and photographer from Green Bay,
Wisconsin, was in Los Angeles as part of a cross-country mural project sponsored by Comcast and other companies going from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Denver to Milwaukee to
Detroit on a private train with 25 other artists. He became a part of it by pitching his photo project on community relationships to public art and sculptures to the sponsor board and meeting the minimum crowd funding requirement of $5000 dollars to get chosen. The trip itself served as a platform for Matt to expand his scope as an artist, carrying his work to the next level for corporate patronage as well as allowing him to engage in a unique and novel form of mobility.
At the same time, the trip itself was only possible due to the development of Matt’s entrepreneurial skills that got him the sponsorship in the first place. Both the preparation for the trip, and the project of the trip itself, actively taught Matt the skills he would need to pitch projects and get sponsorship in the future, cutting his teeth and entering the world of freelance art and photography that could lead to more stable and prestigious jobs down the line. The trip’s mobility between cities showed him that in the future he would need to potentially drop down
245 anywhere there is work, being able to make use of whatever location he passed through for his end goals. The unique form of mobility he engaged on for this trip, and his ability to document and represent it through his art, served as his work that allowed the mobility to happen in the first place, selling this type of mobility as a product. His stay at the PodShare and other locations along the route was a way for him to carve out his own personal part of the trip while also meeting people in each city he went to that could expose him to information and sites that he could use for the project.
While Matt can be seen as a neo-bohemian attempting to enter the creative class, Javier, an early thirties male from Caracas, Venezuela, and Hollywood space resident, serves as a good representative of the state of a creative class worker today in the age of contracting and remote work. Javier was in Los Angeles working as a video editor on a Disney Junior television show.
He had been staying at the Hollywood space for a few weeks, the job lasting a month or so.
Javier used the PodShare to both work and reside in, spending his afternoons editing videos at the table, and his nights being active in the social life of the space. Being in a city where he was not from made it so Javier was reliant on finding social supports on his own, his job providing minimal opportunities. He sought out this social support within the PodShare. He would show other podestrians what he was working on, notify them of entertainment happenings in the area his job made him aware of, and use them as a source of support and friendship for his lonely time spent in Los Angeles outside of the studio. These temporary workers and freelancers were capitalizing off their need to be in the city for some job-specific purpose but also have a space to live and work in on the cheap. The PodShare provided this population of temporary workers and freelancers with what Richard Florida (2002) describes as a “Plug and Play” community:
246
“plug-and-play communities [are places] where anyone can fit in quickly. These are places where people can find opportunity, build support structures, be themselves, and not get stuck in any one identity. The plug-and-play community is one that somebody can move into and put together a life—or at least a facsimile of a life—in a week.” (Florida 2002: 20)
The PodShare provides its residents, particularly the temporary workers, with all the amenities and services of Florida’s “Plug and Play” community. Javier represents a case of digital nomad where his impetus for mobility was strictly employment to begin with, but who is trying to make the most of his situation by experiencing the city as much as he could, making his trip worthwhile by engaging in unique engagements with the city and its residents. Javier shows the turn of the creative class over to contracting and the precipice of remote work, his movement to the city being circumscribed in a similar manner to that of a company expatriate who compensates their lack of agency in choosing a location by partaking in neo-bohemian engagement with the city. This situation spans the temporary worker category, ranging from low- wage service temp work to the more high-skill creative class temp work that Javier engaged in.
Some of these temporary workers were also working these jobs in order to make enough money to establish themselves in the city, giving them a stage from which they could find better jobs and housing. Thus, temporary workers also had the potential to join the population of those transitioning into the city.
Transtioners
The transitioners represented another unique strand, similar to some of the temporary workers, those who were attempting to move to Los Angeles but floundering to find long-term accommodations and employment, residing within the PodShare in order to transition into the city in due time. The transitioners could be viewed as the realization of a social traveler who
247 scouted the city while traveling and came back as a temporary worker to begin the process of settling into the city for good. These residents were generally entering the city without an already established social network, “…moving to LA with no friend’s couch to crash on” (podshare.co), looking to set themselves up in a city they had no connection to. They also generally did not have the money to pay the required first and last month’s rent, security deposit, and a realtor fee necessary to secure an apartment just upon arriving in the city. This unstable position led some transitioning residents to make exploratory, orienting trips to Los Angeles to secure future lodging and employment before moving there for good. An example of this type of transitioner can be seen in the case of Brandon, a white male 22-year old recent college graduate from South
Carolina. Brandon was in Los Angeles for two weeks to secure both a job and a place to live. He spent his days printing out resumes and looking for jobs. He mentioned that he was looking to caddy at one of the “rich” golf courses, saying “the rich ones are the best because they give the fattest tips”. He was looking to caddy but was also interviewing at various service jobs in the area, looking for waiting or bar tender work in West Hollywood. He said that he did not really care what type of work he was doing, he just wanted to live in Los Angeles. He qualified this statement, saying that he had many friends back home who graduated college with a business degree and are now working jobs they hate but do not know what else to do. He wanted to reject the offer of miserable desk work that was presented to him and make his life decisions based on what type of lifestyle he could get out of it. He would spend his nights meeting the other people in the PodShare, specifically clicking with other transitioners, as well as transitioning staff members, who would expose him to their various social networks that he hoped to make use of down the line. Brandon can be viewed as a creative class type who rejects the career trajectory laid out before him, the horizontal and bullshit job hierarchies (Graeber) that have become
248 attached to this social position over the past few decades, in favor of urban nomad and neo- bohemian forms of mobility. There is a rejection of the life possibilities associated with the schooling he received and where he grew up that makes a gamble on downward social mobility palatable if it at least offers exciting and meaningful experiences. Most transitioners used the space of the PodShare in a similar manner, as their base of operations for establishing themselves while also developing friendships with other residents and transitioners. I was told by Elvina, the founder, that in her time running the space a few residents had even ended up moving in together, becoming roommates.
Staff Members
Most staff members also fell into this transitioner group and, while sharing many commonalties with the other resident travelers, differed from them in a few important ways.
Jaclyn, a white American woman in her late-twenties serves as a good representative of this group of staff members. Jaclyn moved to Los Angeles from Minnesota four months before my visit. She initially was supposed to crash with a few friends who already lived here while she
“figured things out”, namely securing a job and an apartment of her own. When she arrived in
Los Angeles, her friends then informed her she could only stay for three months. She tried intensely to find her own place but was unable to on such short notice, conceding that “L.A. real estate and rentals are a crap shoot”. When the time came for her to move out, she scoured
AirBnB for temporary rentals, and while doing so came across the PodShare. Thinking the
PodShare was similar to a hostel, she was reminded of her past experience doing work shares at hostels while traveling abroad in Europe. Work shares are arrangements where hostels provide room and board in exchange for work-in-kind. She figured she would check what work share
249 options existed in L.A., checking the website “workaway.info” for postings. Once again, the PodShare popped up. She then got in contact with Elvina, then started working and living at the Arts District location shortly after. The terms of the workshare demanded roughly 4-6 hours of work for 4-5 days a week in exchange for sleeping quarters in the lower common room and food bought and provided for the staff. The staff members would take possession of the lower common room starting at around 10pm every night when it became their de facto bedroom.
When I asked her how living at the PodShare was working out for her, she responded that “It’s working out pretty well, I’ve been doing it for a few weeks, it works out well for my ambitions
[being a photographer], [living and working here part-time] gives me ample time to work on my craft and portfolio in ways that having a normal job just wouldn’t”. Having free room and board made it easier for her save up money and gave her the time and a base of operations from which to find an apartment, as well as pursue freelance photography jobs, while at the same time hunt for a stable “side-job”. Jaclyn’s form of mobility is that of a neo-bohemian, the drives pushing it forward not necessarily diverging from those Richard Llyod chronicled of this population twenty years ago. However, the manner in which she maintained and buoyed this mobility has changed drastically in the wake of the urban crisis, cheap artist quarters and communities disappearing and being replaced by temporary transit spaces like the PodShare that change the way neo- bohemians connect to the city and who they connect to.
While this case might seem exceptional, the majority of the staff members residing at both of the PodShare’s locations had similar stories, seeking to move and transition into the city but lacking the means to do so easily, faced with a tough rental market, and needing to secure employment. While the staff members were able to work and stay at the PodShare for free, other
250 transitioning residents paid to use the space for similar purposes; however, this staff member/resident pipeline could also run in the opposite direction. During my stay, one of my informants Alyssa, a 25-year old, black American woman from Washington, D.C., started out as a resident and then became a staff member. Alyssa came to Los Angeles to meet up with a childhood friend, Karlie, both of whom were “Army brats” who had already traveled all around the country together in their youth. One morning I woke up to find her changing bed sheets on many of the newly vacated pods. I asked her what she had been up to since we last spoke. She said that she had just been hanging around the PodShare and exploring the Arts District on her own due to the fact that her friend Karlie had returned back to D.C. the day before. I asked her how much longer she was planning on staying in Los Angeles. She said “I don’t know, I might actually try to move here, so I am just going to keep staying here. I’m not booking a return ticket anytime soon”. She then mentioned that she had been talking to Elvina, the founder, and offered to volunteer and help out the staff with some daily activities, that she may transition over to being a staff member while she figured out what she wanted to do. She ended up becoming a staff member, which gave her the time, space, and lack of enduring costs to decide whether she wanted to stay in the city or go on from there. The social opportunities in the space, provided by the practice of co-living, allowed her to make connections to the staff who then let her transition over from being a resident, allowing her to buoy and bolster herself as she decided what it was she was looking for. Alyssa straddles the line between almost all of the sub-populations in the
PodShare as well as multiple positions on the general typology. What makes her case interesting is the degree of uncertainty that comprises and characterizes her mobility and tenancy in the city.
She initially went as a social traveler to meet a friend and ended up stretching her trip beyond that purpose purely to explore and feel the city out. Engaging with the city more, she questioned
251 if she actually wanted to leave and became a temporary worker to give herself time to decide whether she wanted to transition to the city in the long-run. This indeterminacy hovers around all the residents of the PodShare to a lessor or greater extent, its shape changing depending on the experiences each resident has there that opens up or closes future possibilities for mobility and settlement. Looking to each other they also see examples of success or failure, or to even avoid the value-judgements of these terms, different urban prospecting logics and the possibilities they present for a multitude of fluid life outcomes.
The Practice(s) of Co-Living
Each population had their own particular reason for residing in this space. They made use of it in the ways that best fit their needs. The PodShare, in these instances, served to provide each resident group with an orienting stage from which to plug into the city. Sheer geographic access to the city at a low cost is a worthwhile enough goal, one the space meets through having residents live in common with one another to keep costs down. However, the PodShare builds upon the cost saving nature of living close to one another by encouraging its residents to interact with one another, to not only occupy the same space but to share it. The physical set-up of the space, an intensified land-use pattern which allows more people to live in a smaller amount of space, is the starting point, a precondition in this instance for the emergence of co-living proper.
Co-living, however, goes beyond the sharing of space and is constituted by the set of social interactions, cultural practices and products which emerge from a lifestyle, an orientation towards living in common, towards connecting as residents as opposed to co-existing in the same space. These interactions and emergent cultural practices and products can produce shifting social networks which can be relied on for support, information, and entertainment. The
252 PodShare, as a co-living space, really seeks to extend and create its own unique version of a plug and play community (Florida 2002), to create a space where networks like these emerge and expand, becoming the service and commodity they offer to their residents (Amin 2014). The question remains, what cultural practices, norms, and products produced within the co-living space lead to the ends of the plug and play community? What types of interactions act as mechanisms for producing these shifting social networks? How do these populations interact with and relate to each other? How do these interactions, and the practices that emerge from them, create the grounds upon which these populations seek out their futures? How do these interactions help these populations frame themselves, establishing new scales of evaluation which guide their action? What styles of urban prospecting are produced within these spaces that also persists outside of them?
Place-Resumes as Cultural Product
What are the base level interactions that set the stage for how this space and its social world operate? How do these base interactions lead to stronger norms of space-use and interaction? With such an open and in-common spatial set up, norms of use and interaction between the space and its residents needed to be established upon entering the space. Tours upon arrival serve as the primary tool by which all residents are interpolated into the space, taught the allowable activities, defining the few obligations each resident has to the space as well as the few prohibitions on activity that everyone must follow, primarily a ban on sex, and on creating physical barriers of privacy. This tour was a common occurrence that I observed multiple times a day during my stay, playing an important role in crafting a common understanding of how to navigate the space; however, the tour did not do much to cover the large number of possible
253 activities that residents could engage in or not, something that created a space governed by relatively anomic norms, open to being defined by residents up until the point some activity was to be considered disallowable by the staff. Residents operated in this loosely structured space, somewhat testing what they could get away with, but having their activity structured and governed in a few important ways. The pace of life, governed by a few small practices of the staff, such as lights out and wake up times, came to condition a certain daily round and routine which had residents look to each other for norms of activity, for establishing what they should be doing at any given time. This same type of mirroring behavior can also be seen in other practices occurring in the space as residents played with establishing norms and performing activities in this highly spontaneous space, something that is very apparent in the primary practices residents engaged in upon engaging in social interaction.
One of the most common practices that occurs within the co-living space is the sharing of travel narratives, one of the primary practices and mechanisms by which residents come to interact socially. When residents bump into each other in the PodShare, an encounter that is literally designed by the architecture of the space (according to the founder), they are presented with an opportunity to engage in sociality. If this encounter is to open up into a social interaction, the residents’ very preconditions for occupying and residing in this space formulates a script that facilitates the meeting of two strangers. The encounter generally begins with a friendly remark, a
“hi” or “hello”, followed by an introduction, a giving of a name from each party, that is generally gleaned both from the verbal introduction as well as by a look to the chalk name board above each person’s Pod, giving each party a point of reference. Then the resident in charge of the conversation at this point will ask, “Where are you from?” Such a question recognizes the fact
254 that all other residents in the space are merely passing through, all coming from someplace other than here. This leads to the sharing of origin destinations, or an extended cognitive mapping of the constellation of mobility (Cresswell 2010; Jameson 1990) that led the other individual to their current position within this space. It is through probing the origin point, and mapping the path that the other resident has taken, that the residents involved in the interaction can begin to seek out some source of commonality, either through learning of a shared origin point, or from having both passed through another city or space, giving you a point of reference, and a common subject to discuss. Something important to keep in mind is that these interactions are open to the view of other proximate residents residing in their bunks, creating an opening point through which others not involved directly in the interaction can themselves enter, expanding the scope of the interaction as well as the space now involved in it.
These travel and place narratives serve as an opening point through which residents locate and understand one another, placing each other in relation to the world operating outside of the space, an especially rich practice considering 84% of the residency base is international, according to the company’s website. These travel narratives generally play out on two levels: (1) between-city mobility: charting the constellations of mobility each particular resident has taken to get to this point in Los Angeles, providing justification for their current location in the PodShare, and (2) within-city mobility: informing the other residents of why they are in the city, where they have already explored, and what they are planning on doing next. The travel narratives serve many different purposes within the space, serving both as a connection point from which other residents can get to know each other and establish commonality, as well as a way to set one’s self apart in one’s cultural particularity, as well as providing other residents with
255 knowledge of what exists outside of the space. It is once the travel narrative ceases to merely be a convention, or a script used to meet other people, to open up a space of interaction, taking on a definitive role and practice, that the travel narrative takes on the expanded function of the place resume. A place resume can best be understood as a travel narrative employed to accomplish a certain function. I will spend the remainder of this paper outlining the different ways that these place resumes are employed and unpacking how their use and interplay are producing different forms of urban prospecting.
Social Distinction and Authenticity: Between and Within Cities
Place Resumes can serve as a piece of social and cultural capital, a way to distinguish one’s self from the group and from the other residents. Representations of mobility have already been shown to serve a key role in creating liquid identities which are used to leverage networks and social capital on social media networks (Gossling & Stavrinidi 2016); the same is true in co- living settings as well, albeit replete with their own particular dynamics brought on by the geographic location of the network itself. When mapping one’s between-city mobility, the farther one’s constellation of mobility goes, or the more unique it is, the more interesting they become to the group in general and the more their stories and person are sought out by the group. This can be seen in the case of Aaron, the Australian backpacker mentioned above. Aaron made it clear that he had traveled a lot, spending the night before coming here at a party and barely making his flight. He was going to hit up some surfing friends of his in Venice, and then hitchhike up to
Alaska. When another resident asked him if he was going to Anchorage, Aaron rebuked him, saying no, that he was going off the grid, into the wilderness, planning to “get lost in the mountains for a few weeks before I head to the Nevada desert for Burning man”. Aaron’s place
256 resume held value because it was unique and hard to replicate, not a purchasable experience but one open to variability and requiring commitment beyond that of the casual traveler. The way it was also absent of particular dates and planned constraints on travel established that his life was freer than the rest, his mobility not having to be planned or restricted by the trappings of a conventional life. This employment of the place resume set Aaron apart from the rest of the residents and established a standard of value for place resumes based on uniqueness and freedom from constraint.
The place resume, in the service of distinction, can be thought of as the way a resident construes their travel narrative, using the number of places they have been, or the length between the places they have been, or even the uniqueness of their path to curry social favor, as well as using it as a source of conversation from which to build and establish connections. By construing how long one’s between-city place resume is, a resident shows the group that their constellation of mobility is unique and hard to recreate. When residents find that their place resumes contain coordinates that overlap with one another, a second level of the distinction game ensues; at this level, residents then begin providing within-city accounts of their travels through the shared city in question. A recitation of within-city place resumes for the shared city in question is meant to prove proper acquaintance with the city in question, its particular sites and locales, proving an authentic relation to this space (Zukin 2008, 2011). Authenticity and acquaintance in these instances are spelled out by having knowledge of and experience with distinctive locales within a city which house cultural practices and varieties of consumption unique to that city and geographic area, types of activities and experiences that cannot be found anywhere else, otherwise construed as inhabitant knowledge (Moores 2015). All actors involved in the game of
257 distinction work to make other people in the group who have not been to the areas discussed want to go there, trying to entice the crowd to add these missed cities to their own constellations of mobility.
Each facet of the place resume, both the between-city and within-city accounts of mobility, serves to distinguish its author from the group through claims of authenticity and originality, from having seen and experienced more than any other person in the group. When construing one’s place resume, most conversations happening in the space move away from descriptions of where one is from and where they have been, to discussions of what people are in
Los Angeles for and what type of things they have done while there, the mapping of one’s within-city mobility. Residents are looking to find indications of where they should be exploring in the city, also attempting to find those things that are authentic to Los Angeles, things that are
“so L.A” types of consumption and activity that is particular to the city as a whole and cannot be found elsewhere. These authentic ends of within-city mobility ranged from the more mass consumption, city-as-theme-park oriented end of Los Angeles (Disneyland, Universal Studios,
Hollywood Boulevard, the Getty Center, Dodger Stadium) to the local and particular based around the environmental offerings as well unique Los Angeles cultural and lifestyle offerings
(surfing, sun-bathing, art installations, food experiences, comedy clubs, movie screenings, speakeasies, etc.). While this construed authenticity takes on an all-important role in games of distinction, it also generates evaluative frameworks which take on a role above and beyond this bounded context. The criteria of authenticity produced within these games of distinction form their own evaluative frames which are re-directed and used to judge the worthiness of a city as a site of future mobility. A city as a site worthy of mobility is judged by its overall offerings of
258 authenticity, further determined by the conditions of fit that the location offers to each particular individual and the style of life they seek to pursue.
The question then becomes, what do members of this population look for within a city, what types of authenticity entice mobility, and how do they gather the information they need to determine whether a city is worthy of their mobility without going there first? By having a place resume that you can bring to the table, you can share a commonality with other residents whose place resumes have matching locations on it, but also serve as a source of information about the places you visited. In a co-living space, many people are interested in other places that people have traveled to or lived in, thirsting for information about places they have not been. When place resumes are being deployed, respondents generally ask questions relating to what type of life does this or that location offer? What is the climate like? What cultural offerings are available? What does the cost of living look like? Do you see it as a place you would like to live?
These are all questions that the residents of the PodShare ask each other about locations they have not been to, but also serve as the fundamental questions they ask of Los Angeles itself.
They seek to answer these questions by residing in the PodShare, using it as a home-base from which to explore and evaluate the city according to an evaluative framework based on authenticity and fit, prospecting for its unique forms of cultural activity and consumption.
Representing and Making Meaning of Mobility
I would like to spend the rest of this chapter discussing the underlying processes of meaning-making which undergird the cultural practice of sharing travel narratives and help shed light on why place resumes are being constructed and used in the manner seen above. By looking
259 at the way that each population within the PodShare uses and employs these place resumes, I aim to reveal the conditions of precarity brought on by the new urban crisis which frame and make sense of the actions this population makes, as well as explain the way they make sense of their precarity and geographic flight. By reading these actions as the way these populations are grinning or groaning in response to their condition as digital nomads, I will begin to sketch out the ways this population is forming its own styles of urban prospecting and understanding of itself. How then should I begin to read these sets of cultural practices employed in the service of mobility and connecting to urban spaces as a response to a common condition? How should I read these practices as giving shape to an emerging subjectivity and way of life, giving it a sense of identity and shaping the ways it navigates the world and its own economic needs? What needs do these cultural practices fulfil for each distinct population within the PodShare? If I were to consider these practices isolated from their historical and social context, as merely representative of practices separate from the global city, as only applying to a small sub-culture of back-packers and travelers, as a marginal phenomenon as opposed to a reaction to greater macro-trends, I would be missing key insights as to how these practices are representative of larger segments of the population that apply to individuals outside of co-living spaces. Without looking at these practices as reactions to increasing precarity, to bouts of episodic destabilization, their role as the means by which this population of individuals stays afloat as they hop from opportunity to opportunity would be lost.
I want to discuss briefly how the distinguishing and evaluative framing functions of the place resume presented above can be viewed as a response to a precarious condition, as a performance done to compensate for instability, to make meaning in this state of existence as
260 well as make one’s existence possible. Why do place resumes come into being, and have such a strong hold over how people come to relate and distinguish themselves in these places? While the place resume on its face is merely a way one brags about one’s experiences and shows distinction over others, it is also a recognition of a shared condition of mobility and of being in- transit, a condition felt differently by everyone living in it. In many instances, this state of being in-transit, betwixt and between lives and places, is a condition forced upon people, not necessarily in a top down sense, but in the sense that the condition they are living in requires them to leave the place they are from to find some sort of opportunity elsewhere. This is true for all three of the major populations residing in the PodShare. I will spend the remainder of this section describing how place resumes are used by each of the populations identified above to make meaning of, and frame, their geographic flight. I will unpack how the authorship of one’s place resume provides them with an alternative way of conceptualizing and understanding their lives and condition.
Social Travelers
The social travelers are either taking time between or while still in school to see the world, to take advantage of educations offered elsewhere, and make connections to wide varieties of people. For this confluence of students, backpackers, and alternativi, their stay in Los
Angeles constitutes a way point, a transitionary episode in their lives. For the students away on gap year, their mobility in this instance represents a break away from the reality that awaits them back home. It is a time to explore, to sample what the world outside their homes has to offer, to experiment with different ways of life. For some of these social travelers, their time spent travelling constituted a second life, their periodic vacations forming a separate life narrative that
261 could be drawn on for sources of identity and meaning. This is best exemplified by Mary, an
American woman in her early thirties from Flagstaff, Arizona. She talked to everyone she could about her bucket list, which started off with the goal of hitting all fifty states in the United States.
She planned her life, all her future vacations, around making this goal a reality. Once she had been to thirty-five of the fifty states, she saw her goal coming within reach and then decided that she wanted to add on all fifty-eight national parks to her bucket list as well, claiming it was a much harder task to accomplish. She drew tremendous meaning from her bucket list project, each stop on her place resume constituting a unique experience she had had, unfolding the “true” story of her life. She claimed these trips kept her motivated at work back home, that she had to continue to work hard to keep working through her bucket list. Most of the money she saved from working went into her extended travels.
This vignette contains a grain of truth for all of the populations that flow through the space of the PodShare. For most residents, but the social travelers and alternativi in particular, travel and being mobile represented adventure. Travel served as an escape from their everyday lives, a periodic practice used to do new things, to see new places, to experiment with ideas of what their lives could be like elsewhere. For gap year students, the mobility of the gap year constituted a time in their lives in which they could experiment with what they wanted out of life, gain a broader context from which they could make more informed decisions about their future. For social travelers like Mary, travel itself constituted a second life, an arena outside her everyday life where she could sustain a narrative of herself being on an adventure, living through her periodic vacations. The coordinates on her place resume represent the success she has achieved in her life, as well as constituting who she is as a person. The alternativi take this one
262 step further, differing from Mary only in intensity. They reject even the confines or presumptions of an everyday life and embrace an alternative countercultural lifestyle. They choose to only live in the unique experiences of travel, to cut one unending and unique path through the world, their meaning coming from the people they meet and the ephemeral experiences they enjoyed along the way. This is not to say that they do not also enter into precarious labor situations, or that they do not work, but that they embrace the temporary nature of the work, working only long enough to fund their next stint of mobility. The work is done in the course of their mobility, not in a site outside of it, or in the stable environment of a home or office.
Temporary Workers
The temporary workers and freelancers, by the very nature of the employment they can find, must always be pivoting to new economic opportunities, their current forms of employment always temporary, episodic and contracted, so that when they are done with one project they must be able to find employment and work elsewhere. These opportunities are geographically isolated and distributed among a variety of cities and thus they are required to be able to be geographically mobile in order to stay afloat (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2018). This movement is at one and the same time compulsory and chosen, or at least communicated as a choice. This contradiction is emphasized in the way these temporary workers discuss their travels. This simultaneity of feelings of dislocation along with feelings of choosing an alternative lifestyle are best emphasized in a conversation I witnessed between Annett (a German woman in her early thirties from Cologne, Germany) and Bethany (a woman in her early thirties from Sydney,
Australia). The two were staying in adjacent pods, and one day they came back from their respective journeys and bumped into each other, sparking a conversation. Bethany recognized
263 Annett’s German accent and asked her if she was from Germany. Annett responded that she was from Cologne. Bethany then mentioned that she had been to Cologne before, that she had actually traveled quite extensively through Europe and even lived in Milan for a while. The two then related their between-city place resumes to each other, comparing linking points. Bethany then went on to talk about how hard it was to get her bearings in the United States, commenting
“I remember being overwhelmed and out of my element, missing home. It took me a really long time to adjust to new places and cultures”. This comment held not only for the United States but for every destination that she had been to outside of Australia. She then qualified her statement, saying “I needed to get away from Australia and I don’t really ever want to go back”. Annett was taken aback by this statement, asking Bethany “Why? Australia is so nice.” Bethany responded that “You might think that, but Australia isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s too small, it has high taxes, and lots and lots of rules that don’t let you do anything.” Bethany wanted to find a place with less rules. Annett responded that she actually really does not want to move away from
Cologne, that she is mobile for work and trying to get back. For her, Cologne was where her family was, it was where she wanted to be, and the place she would return to once she was better established professionally.
This vignette shows that what is presented in these interactions, and through the sharing of place resumes, works beyond a merely instrumental and distinction-based level of socialization, and actually reveals the multiplicity of factors driving these individuals to be mobile. In it we see individuals, like Bethany, who are happy to be mobile, who are looking for something else than what they came from, even if the dislocating aspect of it is overwhelming.
These individuals are grinning at their condition even if it is disorienting and hard at times,
264 weaving it into their identities and the way they present themselves to others. While a final location may be on the horizon, it is the promise of newness and the possibility of a fit that drives mobility in these instances. It becomes about the journey, not the destination. There are also those who groan more at their situation, such as Annett, who does enjoy some parts of the mobile lifestyle but also longs to return home. For her, it was about rationalizing this period of her life, her mobility during this period being the route by which she could establish herself back in
Cologne in the future. This follows the more traditionally observed life-cycle routes of mobility that have characterized the twenties and thirties as the time in which people move to the city to progress in their careers, then move back to where they are from (Baumeister, 1986; Bell C.,
2001; Fischer 2016; Hochstadt, 1998). In this instance, the city is being replaced by a multiplicity of cities, by mobility itself.
Transitioners
Transitioners are generally making their first move to a new city or continuing a string of periodic moves. They bring with them a whole set of cultural and emotional baggage which is revealed in the way they frame Los Angeles, their current site of mobility, in contrast to the other locations on their place resume. Their discussion of their own place resumes provides us with a window to see what each city represents for them, making sense of both what they hope to find in each new city, as well as a backdrop for deciphering why they left the other cities. This brings to mind a conversation I had in the lower common room of the PodShare with Alyssa and Karlie
(mentioned above). After a requisite sharing of travel narratives, we each began to inquire into each other’s place resumes, which prompted self-explanations of them. These explanations served to make sense of the movement made by each of us between the cities on our place
265 resumes. Before coming to Los Angeles, Alyssa and Karlie had been living in Washington D.C. and New York City respectively. Los Angeles itself was the second stop on their cross-country travels thus far, having first passed through Philadelphia. They mentioned that they were looking for something different than New York City and Washington D.C., construing this difference in terms of cost of living, rent, as well as friendliness. They had been visiting Philadelphia because they had heard that real estate there was currently cheap, the high cost of real estate in both New
York and D.C. prohibiting them from even being able to consider a longer-term investment there. They were looking to buy a condo together to live in but that would serve as a good investment, looking around Temple University. They were surprised by the low cost of living, as well as the low barriers to entry in the city (store fronts costing, according to them, $700/month), with strange shops, art galleries, community spaces and the like sprinkled throughout.
They then counter posed their experience of Los Angeles to both Philadelphia as well as their experience of the East Coast in general. We debated the merits of the East and West Coasts, with Alyssa and Karlie claiming that “everyone here [on the West Coast] is just so nice and friendly, not like back on the East Coast”, construing the West coast as being more congenial, outgoing, and generally more open. In contrast, they argued that back on the East Coast
“everyone is so busy and hectic, they have no time for anyone, and they write you off so quickly” construing the East Coast as cold, full of people who are too busy to engage with one another, and who are just generally closed off. They argued that they felt more comfortable in
Los Angeles, where they had met people randomly on the street, on the train, in bars, etc., in ways they never had been able to on the East Coast. The cultural orientations of the East and
West Coast became for them important attributes to consider when they were trying to decide
266 where they should live, or go next, looking for fit in both terms of culture and lifestyle. Beyond these desires for fit and lifestyle lay concerns with affordability, of being able to actually buy a home, of living a life not so determined by work and paying the bills. It was these concerns and desires that ultimately led to Alyssa deciding to stay in Los Angeles. This ability to see and test out the future backdrop of your life, to see the alternative trajectories you could take, is at the core of urban prospecting in general with Alyssa’s trip to Los Angeles one of many scouting trips she was taking before figuring out where to settle down. When discussing my own planned travel to Seattle for an academic conference after my time at the PodShare, Alyssa remarked “It’s funny you are going there because that was originally the city I was going to check out for living
[instead of LA]. I like it as an idea of a place to live. It’s best to visit a place before moving, it’s better than seeing it sight unseen.” The use of the place resume in this instance, and for digital nomads in general, reveals a concern with finding something better than where they came from, or at the very least finding something that makes their leaving of where they came from worth it.
Both success or failure on these terms can work to propel more bouts of mobility into the future, finding enjoyment and meaning in new cities making them wonder what other places offer, or disappointment and discontentment with their initial bout of mobility driving them to be mobile again.
Grinning or Groaning? Or both?
Without the stability of work lives and careers to anchor them, where does one’s source of identity come from, especially in light of Standing’s (2011) statistic that the average worker today will have nine jobs by the time they are thirty-years-old, and complicated by not having a fixed geographic location? How do people then make sense of and represent their lives spent
267 jumping from opportunity to opportunity in hope of stability in a way that gives them ownership over this outwardly imposed condition, while also giving this constant state of flight meaning?
The place resume, in these specific instances, then is a way of taking a story of episodic instability, lines of flight, and struggle, and turning them into sources of pride and distinction.
The longer a place resume, the more an individual has been forced to try over again, to have realized failure in a certain sense, of not being able to keep consistent work, or of still being in the process of establishing one’s self. It is against this failure that the place resume, and its extension, acts as a justification for not sticking in one place, the representation spinning this flight as one’s desire to explore and experience the world, to not be tied down in one place, to do so being construed as dull and boorish, missing out on all the things that the world has to offer. It forms a justification for one’s mobility, the start of a story which the author uses to make sense and meaning out of their flight to both themselves and others. Thus, they start to focus on the positives of being in-transit, of what they get out of living and travelling to multiple places, becoming the grinners of their condition, namely having unique experiences in whatever cities they flow through, setting authenticity of experience then as a primary value.
This positive representation of mobility then comes to be the way that a mobile individual represents themselves to others, creating a script that sets long place resumes as highly valuable, something that once performed creates a scale and measure by which others start to measure themselves. It also helps to frame what type of information and conversation is to be had and shared, framing only the positive appearance of each other’s mobility, calling for interactions which only confirm these types of representations and add meaning to them. This helps ground and make sense of where the evaluative frames presented above come from, why they come into
268 existence, providing an understanding of the preconditions that allow them to play such a primary role in directing future bouts of mobility. The continuation of this type of digital nomad life, or at least the willingness to continue pivoting geographically every time it is called for, requires a certain rejection of its perils and negatives. Thus, arises a focus on what can be gotten out of this type of lifestyle, the authentic experiences and cultural offerings available in any location they might find themselves in. It is the connection between these preconditions of existence, cultural practices employed, evaluative frameworks generated, and futures set to be pursued that constitutes the forming image and discourse of this population in flight. It is the way this population connects, frames, and makes meaning of these factors that gives birth to a variety of urban prospecting outcomes that will shape future connections to the global city and beyond.
To Los Angeles and Beyond
From the above vignettes and explorations of the different motivations and conditions that drive the mobility of the sub-groups within the PodShare, it is clear that people are looking for different things from the cities they travel to and live in. They travel between them looking for fit in terms of cultural consumption, environment, and social reproduction, looking for different city-settings that are right for them at different points in their lives. They become urban prospectors, looking for the next site where opportunity can be struck, staying for as long as they hit pay-dirt, and picking up again as soon as the vein gives out and word of opportunity elsewhere makes its way to them. As social travelers, they prospect the area for uniqueness and potential settlement longer down the road. As temporary workers, they are here for episodic jaunts dictated by the needs of their employment but made the most of through the creation of social networks and living in plug and play communities. Transitioners are in the city for a bit
269 more of a long haul, though this anchoring could be one move in a string of moves depending on their conditions of employment and their ability to maintain themselves. The prospecting of the transitioners here has a bit more of an authentic or bare quality, guided by a need to access the opportunity structures of cities but in a manner that also vibes with their chosen modes of social reproduction that fuel their identity.
The mobility and prospecting of each of these sub-groups, when brought together in the space of the PodShare and back out into the city of Los Angeles, impacts each other and helps shape the matrix of possibilities that seem realizable for everyone residing in the space. The workers and transitioners rely on the social travelers to inundate the space with the touristic excitement of arriving in a new city, seeking out entertainment and authentic activities unique to the city in question, which provide the transitioners with the excitement they sought in moving to this city in particular but that could be drowned in just transitioning on your own and finding a job and place to stay in a lonely new city. The transitioners provide the social travelers and temporary workers with an idea of what it would be like to move to this city, or at least serve as an example of the possibility of moving here. The temporary workers fall between these groups and can provide both of these services to the population in general, as well as serve as a connection to their employment and professional networks that might know other things happening in the city. In the end you have a unique concentration and composition of emerging urban prospecting practices, where new social networks, experiences, and possibilities open upon arrival to these spaces like the PodShare that are not repeatable, that open up a different cast of characters with their own relations to the city that make different explorations and sides of the city available. This compilation of digital nomads accommodates itself to the city’s established
270 forms of life and social structure, instead of creating the social structure itself, or at least does so in a secondary manner. They transpose themselves onto the city, on its complexifying super- structure as opposed to altering its base.
The PodShare connects these populations to Los Angeles, supporting the mobilities underlying its global city processes, taking in the labor mobility set loose by the new urban crisis, and keeping it circulating, allowing the global city to continue and intensify. While the engagements of digital nomads with Los Angeles are filled with moments of newness and uniqueness, the processes they engage in and support at the city level are a continuation of the city’s underlying social structure as opposed to an alternative or departure from them. The
PodShare guides and directs these mobilities into the city as a way to continue and intensify the urbanization processes belying the new urban crisis. It supports and facilitates the circulation of workers between cities which can provide these populations individual level fixes to their situations but not necessarily for the city as a whole. The PodShare offers the extension of the
Pied-a-Terre, or foothold in the city, characteristic of talented expatriates brought down the class structure to meet the increased need of the laboring and consuming populations the city needs to function, getting around high rents and a lack of access by communing in space to split the price. Maintenance is the key word. The PodShare helps maintain the city’s global connections as labor and industry undergo changes to fit within the regime of flexible accumulation, making space for its new figures as opposed to being shaped by them.
These digital nomads use Los Angeles primarily as a site of consumption and circulation, brought primarily by its consumption offerings, with social travelers and temp workers using it
271 to find out where to circulate next, like boarders at an old western inn looking for news of a gold rush. Transitioners and staff try to find ways to fit within its productive structure, changing themselves to fit within it or going to Los Angeles for its particular industries. They attach to the global city in the ways that it allows, connecting in new ways compared to past Angelenos but with limited ability to actively contest the established links between consumption and production baked into the city itself. This limits the range of digital nomads we see coming here, to those not looking necessarily for a radical departure from existing urban conditions and livelihoods, just for a space of their own within them. This conglomeration of digital nomads being observed is also limited to more aspirant or junior digital nomads who travel cheaply as opposed to those who have the means to make accessing the global city a non-issue. This circuit of the spatial displacement of labor directed at the global city is made up of digital nomads who are attempting to become mobile to see what this mobility and location opens up and offers them, performing a flurry of test runs before committing to the extended mobility of digital nomadhood. This movement to the global city, as hypothesized in the Digital Nomad Cities chapter, is guided by touristic and consumptive jaunts of mobility, serving as first attempts made at living a life in circulation. This is not to say that more seasoned and self-conscious digital nomads are not still attaching themselves to global cities, but to point to the constraints they find there that shape and guide their future bouts of mobility to other global cities and beyond them.
In the chapter that follows, I will unpack the circuit of the spatial displacement of labor moving away from the global city to offbeat locations and its attendant forms of urban prospecting. I will show that the formulas underlying urban prospecting do not differ depending on whether they are guiding movement towards the city or away from it, but rather by how
272 individuals juxtapose the location that is being evaluated in relation to their past travels, movement to the global city begetting movement away from it, as well as the inverse.
273
Flight from the City
274 Chapter 5
‘A Digital Influx in the Himalayas’: The Pursuit of Alterity and “Off-Beat” Geographies in Dharamsala, India
Introduction
In this chapter, I continue the line of exploration started in the last chapter on Los
Angeles, charting and evaluating the conditions and background ephemera that make the mobility and life situations of the digital nomad population legible, shifting my lens of observation to a new location and approaching a new assemblage of this population in the
Ghoomakad Co-living Space outside McLeod Ganj, India. While I investigated the circuit of mobility that led digital nomads to the global city in the last chapter, I will be changing focus to look at the other circuit of the spatial displacement of labor: movement away from the global city. By focusing on the motivations that frame and propel this population’s flight from the city, I can begin to posit how these Offbeat locations become sites for mobility investment, urban fantasy and speculation. I can then start to uncover what pushes and pulls this population away from clogged urban centers to the margins, namely the possibility of building their own places of dwelling to help them realize unique and meaningful lives. Though this population may project the promise of living lives of meaning and alterity on these Offbeat locations, the ability to actualize this promise is all but guaranteed, with the road to settling in these locales filled with many obstacles and challenges, such as confronting the reality that the social structures of these socio-spatial formations do not provide robust employment opportunities fitting their expectations of work or provide large enough incomes to sustain the levels of consumption and life activity they moved to this locale for.
275 A primary way that this population confronts this employment mismatch is to bring their own work with them, to work remotely. Working remotely serves as a key mechanism and practice by which this population is able to attain some freedom of movement away from the city in crisis as well as anchor themselves in Offbeat locations like Dharamsala. Since this population is bringing their work with them, they have more individual control over what form their work takes in relation to their everyday life, and thus can have more autonomy over the style of life they can craft for themselves, including increased choice over where they live. However, this autonomy also comes with an increased set of responsibilities and new demands on the self as this population also now has to furnish the infrastructures that underlie their own labor that the firm in the city used to provide (workspace, computers, IT, HR) and perform more varied forms of uncompensated work in order to get the clients and contracts that will put an income in their pockets wherever they go. This forces them to be able to make connections to the other elements of the socio-spatial formations they travel to in order to build this (re)productive infrastructure for the continuation of their own labor, serving as a both limitation on their abilities to go off the map and on their autonomy to fully pursue meaningful ways of life.
The boundaries separating parts of the life world, both socially and spatially as in the city in crisis, are cast aside and the digital nomad becomes responsible for furnishing all its components: employment, residence, social network, social reproduction, consumption, cultural practice, and meaning. These different elements are no longer necessarily centralized in one urban space, the connections between them the static, self-evident, unchangeable and practico- inert (Sartre 1968) result of past actors’ actions that you have to accommodate yourself to, but a bundle of goods differentially obtainable based on individual biography, skills, and locality. This
276 becomes quite a demand on the abilities of the individual, a tall order for anyone to manage, but if they can manage to make their own assemblage of the means of (re)production, then it is theirs’ to control, the relations of production being their own product. The actions this population employs to make their own individual connections between elements of new socio-spatial formations, thereby setting up their own relations of production, teaches them how to build a new lifeworld wherever they go, giving them the ability to alter the socio-spatial formations they flow to, opening up different possibilities for production, consumption, and life in general.
Thus enters the digital nomad in all its plurality and variation, their goal being to assemble these elements in a manner that allows them to continue existing but also judged on its ability to allow for a more authentic or at least seemingly “chosen” path of life than that offered to them by the existing socio-spatial formations they have called home. In this chapter, I will continue unpacking and charting the spectrum of digital nomad responses to the new urban crisis, the plurality and progressiveness of the assemblages they build, and their role in them, specifically looking at the composition of digital nomads residing in Offbeat locations. I will start with social travelers and backpackers, merely attempting to live an alternative lifestyle, seeing other people making a living writing blogs and working on contracts which compels them to attempt “digital nomad-hood”, covering the range of scaling possibilities from the backpacker, to the blog writer somewhat subsidizing their travel, to the independent contractor pulling in dribs and drabs of unsteady work, to the remote worker employed by a big firm, to the contractor turned entrepreneur, to the three person company, to the completely distributed firm. The attainment of tenancy in these sites of alterity relies on this population’s ability to master and
277 acquire the different forms of labor and work that allows each of them more individual control and authorship over their own social reproduction, social networks, and lifeworlds.
Ghoomakad and its Surrounding Socio-Spatial Context
In the foothills of the Himalayas, roughly 500km north of New Delhi, and eight kilometers east of McLeod Ganj -- the home in exile of the Dalai Lama -- and Dharamsala, India, tucked away in a rural village of former Gaddi nomads sits a multi-building mud hut complex, a co-living and co-working space for digital nomads and remote workers known as Ghoomakad -- hindi for “wanderer” or “continuous traveler”. Ghoomakad is ringed by a fence, outside of which lies an NGO-funded park and communal water system, a women’s shelter, an animal rescue, a
Tibetan cultural workshop and refuge, active bands of goat herders, traditional housing as well as some new construction, connected via partially paved streets lined with cows, dogs, mopeds, motorcycles, and taxis. Inside the fence lies three residential buildings, two stories each with shared balconies, the spaces between the buildings lined with grape vines, trees, and stones. A shared community kitchen with staff that provides breakfast, lunch, and dinner lies on one end of the complex, with a co-working space sitting in its center. Within the co-working space sits an ever-changing assemblage of residents, some young internal Indian migrants coming from college and first-jobs in Bangalore, Mumbai, and Pune, others older non-resident Indians coming from whole careers in tech done abroad in the west, others still international tourists, backpackers, and volunteers. Within this co-working space, there are individuals writing blogs for passive income and entertainment, or working on digital marketing contracts for local & regional businesses and hotels, to remote workers who are actively employed and involved in the
278 functioning of high profile western firms, banks, and tech companies, to CEO’s of small but growing distributed companies.
All of this is happening in a place off the beaten trail in the foothills of the Himalayas where the electricity goes out regularly and the only internet to be trusted comes in the form of the personal cellular hotspots each resident maintains for themselves. The residents split their time working with spontaneous trips to swim and bathe in the river behind the co-living space, playing soccer with locals in the afternoon, taking early morning chai while watching the sunrise dissipate the morning mist, revealing the mountain peaks framing the region, eating food grown and prepared in the plot next door, and breaking up their workflow with an impromptu presentation on blockchain technologies. Here, off the map, processes and labor normally thought of as particularly urban and global are occurring in a place that could have recently or unknowingly been described as anything but. This co-living space has managed to draw out these talented and skilled individuals, as well as the bohemians which accompany them, out to this rural mountain village based on the promise of its Offbeat character, of its purporting to be a smart village taking the good which the city provides such as a cosmopolitan worldviews and diverse mobile populations, and discarding its ills, namely over-congestion, over-population, and rising costs of living. It mixes this with the good of the village with its close social relationships and community, while also getting rid of its ills, its closed population and conservative social culture. The residents are drawn here for different periods of time, constituting a jumping off point for more mobility, international living and travel for some; a periodic escape from city- living for others; and an ending place after a long career of mobility elsewhere, a place to settle down and get back to the basics. This centralization of residency, socialization, social
279 reproduction, and the work and employment that residents bring with them, activates this space and the place it is situated within as an arena to invest one’s mobility in, as both an outside and an inside to processes of contemporary urban work and life.
The Surrounding Socio-Spatial Formation
Ghoomakad serves as a unique anchor for a novel digital influx flowing into the Himalayas, a unique co-living space and techie community drawing in digital nomads, remote workers, social travelers, backpackers, and other highly sought after residents and consumers that are making a community within the boundaries of this Offbeat mountain village. To understand how
Ghoomakad has developed this community and become an anchor for this digital influx, I must first begin to situate it in its surrounding socio-spatial formation. I will begin by looking at the types of people and industries already residing in this area of the Himalayas. By parsing out
Ghoomakad’s location proximate to the touristic and cultural hill stations of Dharamsala and
McLeod Ganj, and its underlying position within the villages of Rakkar and Fatephur, I can begin to uncover how the features of its surrounding socio-spatial formation both contribute to the growth of this digital nomad community, as well as how Ghoomakad itself, and the residents it brings to it, build on the local processes of the surrounding environment.
Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj
Dharamsala is anchored in a mountain valley between the Himachal Pradesh Cricket
Stadium and the central bus depot, the bus depot a hub for both local and regional bus transit to the area, with the Kotawali Bazaar, a market system of narrow shop-lined streets replete with cell phone and electronics stores, food carts, hospitals, cafes, and government buildings, wound
280 between them. Dharamsala itself is a Hindi word translating roughly as “a shelter or rest house for spiritual pilgrims”, referring to rest houses built around sites of spiritual pilgrimage in remote areas to lodge travelers, one of these “dharamsalas” serving as the base on which the city was built and established. Dharamsala was annexed in 1848 by the British, who built the resulting settlement to serve as both a garrison for Gurkha regiments, or native Nepalese army units, recruited by the British Army, as well as a hill station getaway for British colonial administrators, soldiers, and citizens looking to escape the oppressive Indian summer heat down southlxix, serving as a site for health resorts and resting places for British rulers until Indian
Independence. Lower Dharamsala -- Dharamsala proper -- became a “nerve center of trade, business, and official work of [the administration of the] Kangra [Municipal District]”lxx, hosting an increasing amount of governmental and military buildings and functions. After Indian
Independence and the Chinese Invasion of Tibet, Dharamsala became a Tibetan Refugee
Settlement in 1959, with Prime Minister Jawaharial Nehru offering up sparsely populated Upper
Dharamsala -- McLeod Ganj-- largely a “forgotten [British] ghost-town wasting in the woods” to the Dalai Lama and his followerslxxi. McLeod Ganj became the Home in Exile for Tibetan refugees and the Dalai Lama’s “government in exile” in 1960. McLeod Ganj became the hub of
Tibetan migration and cultural activity, leading to the build-up of a local Tibetan population and the construction of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and other institutions aimed at safe-guarding
Tibetan cultural practicelxxii. The spiritual and cultural sites added to the already existing Hindu religious sites, like the Gurkha Bhagsou Temples, that had been a draw for internal Indian pilgrimage and tourism, strengthening the spiritual and touristic pull of the city, expanding the population of tourists drawn there to an International level. Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj are also the starting point for a number of trekking trails through the Dhaludar Mountain range,
281 bringing nature and hiking tourism along with them. Dharamsala’s colonial roots and construction as a natural and spiritual retreat have left a lasting neo-colonial imprint on the area, crafting an image that continues to impact and shape how incoming populations approach and interact with it, among both domestic Indian and international travelers.
Today, Dharamsala has a population of 53,543 as of 2015, making it the third largest city in the State of Himachal Pradesh, with a land area of 26.2 km² and a population density of 1,900 per square kmlxxiii. In 2015, Dharamsala was selected as one of India’s 100 cities to be developed and retrofitted as part of Prime Minister Modi and the Ministry of Urban Development’s Smart
Cities Mission. Dharamsala is now split largely between the two districts of Lower Dharamsala -
- or just Dharamsala -- the area of the Kotawali Bazaar at the base of the mountain described above, and Upper Dharamsala -- McLeod Ganj -- located up a set of narrow winding roads at the mountain’s peak. This spatial separation is coupled with a general cultural, economic and population split as well, with Lower Dharamsala shaped by the government functions it houses and their worker populations of largely Indian background, contrasted with McLeod Ganj’s touristic and pilgrim focused economy hosting a sizeable Tibetan population, and drawing in a large amount of both Indian and Western Tourists. While there is obviously some overlap in attendant populations and functions between these two sites, there is a glaringly obvious color- line operating here with Western tourists largely absent from Lower Dharamsala and isolated within McLeod Ganj where in some sections they outnumber the Indian population.
The road from Dharamsala to McLeod Ganj can be traversed by bus starting at the base of the mountain and making the slow and snaking climb up a series of narrow mountain
282 cutbacks. As you walk into the city on the mountain, you are hit head on by throngs of congestion framed by buildings rising six to seven stories up, backed by the misty peaks of the
Dhaludars and alighted by the twinkling lights of Lower Dharamsala climbing up the mountain below. The area is packed with people funneling in from the main highway and dispersing into a set of narrow passages between the tall buildings, largel hotels and apartment buildings, packed with street merchants, shops, momo dumpling carts, Tibetan handicraft stalls, beggars and tourists of all stripes, with a noticeable uptick in the number of westerners present. From the entrance, McLeod Ganj assembles itself off of two main roads running perpendicular to one another, with a network of smaller alleys and parallel roads running off of them. The Dalai
Lama’s Temple lies at the end of the first major road, located at the edge of the cliff overlooking
Lower Dharamsala, a compound replete with a Tibetan History Museum, Handcraft Shops, monasteries, prayer wheels and all, hosting its own hotels and residences. This compound is a major draw for tourist activity, with the Dalai Lama often giving public talks where listeners are grouped by continent and nationality, showing a microcosm and representation of the broader world. Outside of this compound, visitors and tourists can entertain themselves by attending any of the myriad yoga and meditation camps nestled away in every corner of the city, ashrams and compounds found both within the urban center of McLeod Ganj as well as spiraling outwards on its edges in peaks and valleys accessed by trail. These ashrams are equaled in number by the amount of crash pad cafes where locals, tourists and backpackers alike waste away their days drinking chai, conversing, playing board games and smoking hash in the open-air environment, gazing at their mountain surroundings. The cafes are often attached to attendant hotels, ashrams, and hostels, constituting their own contained lifeworlds only left for periodic adventures elsewhere.
283
These café-hostel compounds serve as the landing pad both for tourists and backpackers but also for those moving to the area, many starting here, establishing a social network and spreading out into farther off villages in the surrounding area as their comfort and desire for longer-term settlement grows. As one leaves the city up the trails and roads to higher elevation and smaller outlying settlements, the hotel, café, ashram configuration stays the same while the population changes. Dharamkot, one of the closer outlying mountain settlements, has become a home to an increasingly homogenous Israeli and western backpacker population. Dharamkot, and other hill stations throughout India like Manali and Shimla, have come to be settled by roaming bands of Israeli backpackers, many of whom come to places like these after their tours in the Israeli Defense Force to unwind and deal with their experiences, to escape into the mountains and explore themselves. This has led to a build-up of both Israeli backpackers as well as Israeli owned and focused businesses in the area, with even some shops, cafes and hotels owned by Indians having their signs and menus appear first in Hebrew and then in Hindi. Upon entering Dharamkot, you feel you are entering a space very distinct and apart from McLeod Ganj and Dharamsala, with a sparse and almost absent Indian and Tibetan population and a host of white western faces, Indian informants of mine remarking “I don’t feel like I am in India anymore” upon crossing the threshold into Dharamkot. This segregation of space by culture and population speaks largely to how expats, locals, tourists and Tibetans interact with one another here, largely sticking to their own kind within compounds sprinkled throughout the mountain, all trying to get from the mountain town their own sought-after experiences. Dharamsala has been
“discovered” as a place of escape, a hill station getaway from the world where a closeness to nature and an inner spiritual exploration of self is made possible. The search for escape has
284 pushed against the boundaries of Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj as more seekers have come to its boarders, pushing their influence and the corresponding forms of development and settlement out further into the mountains and into the rural hinterland on a path of collision with the outlying traditional village communities and military-government enclaves already settled there.
Rakkar, Fatephur and the Road to Dharamsala
The village of Rakkar, the site of Ghoomakad, lies 8.5km east of Dharamsala, 2 km up narrow and winding mountain roads paved over the last two years. Ghoomakad sits just off the
Village center, the green pitch of the Rakkar School Ground which hosts the Nageshwar Shiva
Hindu Temple, a children’s playground and an NGO-funded water filtration system. This pitch is ringed by the Jagori Rural Charitable Trust and a Rural Women’s Cooperative to the South, an
Animal Rescue and a Children and Family Center down the road to the East, the Nishta
Development-Oriented NGO headquarters to the North, and Ghoomakad and the river to the
West, all sitting in the Himalayan Foothills and framed by the snow-capped and mist-shrouded craggy peaks of the Dhauludar Mountain Range. Rakkar has traditionally been comprised of former Gaddi nomads who were forced to settle on government provided land, shepherds, and a few farmers. The rocky soil in the area has made it hard to be a successful farmer in these parts beyond subsistence level farming, with a few community farm exceptions, acting as a constraining condition on the types of industry possible here. There is also a smattering of retired-military families dispersed throughout the underlying area in both older and newly built homes, with a few convenience stores, liquor shops, and food stands sparsely lining the roads from the village center to the houses down the road in any direction. This more traditional village, retirement, and consumption-based economy and population is supplemented by the
285 developmental NGO build-up of the immediate area surrounding Ghoomakad, with these local, national, and international level institutions providing employment and resources to the village community. These institutions also bring in a fair share of international workers and visitors, with contractors, development specialists, professors, research assistants and the like coming here to both help aid in local development projects as well as study community dynamicslxxiv.
These NGOs, and the visitors and resources they bring with them, help contribute to the unique cosmopolitan nature of the village, with a few villagers opening up a room or two in their homes to serve as homestays for these visitors and serving as guides for local hikes and trips to Temples in the area.
Just Northwest of the village center lies a recently constructed bridge spanning the river that connects Rakkar to the neighboring village of Fatehpur. Before the bridge was built, the two villages were relatively separate social formations, at least in terms of local residence and interaction, with the nearest crossing being 2km south through the village of Sidhbari, a 4km trip up and down the mountain for residents of the two villages to reach one another. With the opening of the bridge, the two villages and their separate social bases have come into sustained contact and influence. Upon crossing the bridge from Rakkar to Fatephur, one is confronted by a drastic difference in the types of buildings found here juxtaposed to the more modest mudhuts and single-family homes found in Rakkar. Fatephur’s side of the bridge is sited just beneath a large residential complex of condos, with restaurants serving Indian, Chinese and continental food to the North, and independent hotels and resorts down the road to the South, with white vans and their resort license plates filled with Indian tourists buzzing up and down the road.
Between the build-up of resorts and shops, spaced out by large plots of farming and grazing land
286 and the boulder-strewn mountain landscape are a number of retired army family homes along with much larger homes in the process of being built, estates and compounds compared to the smaller homes and farms found in Rakkar.
The area of the mountain on this side of the river is more built up due largely to the fact that the village of Fatephur is home to two prominent cultural and touristic sites, the Norbulingka
Tibetan Cultural Institute and the Thomsaling International Women’s Buddhist Nunnery. These two cultural sites have encouraged the build-up of the attendant touristic infrastructure found in the village of Fatephur, keeping these more isolated communities and compounds alive with visitors. Though these sites are visited by and cater to international western tourists, most of these western tourists stay within the boundaries of these compounds or come in white taxi vans for day trips from McLeod Ganj proper. The touristic infrastructure outside the compound gates, with the exception of a few shops and restaurants, caters to a different tourist population: that of
Indian tourists. These Indian tourists are looking to escape the population density and chaos of
Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj proper, seeking a feeling of closeness to nature and a more authentic Indian village experience, with the proximity to these cultural sites serving as an added benefit. This tourist infrastructure has also brought with it the longer-term settlement of internal
Indian migrants who came to the village on vacation and decided to move to the area, the source of much of the new construction popping up in Fatephur. The emergence of the bridge connecting Fatephur to Rakkar has begun to bring this tourist and internal migrant population and infrastructure build-up across the bridge to Rakkar itself.
287 These villages are experiencing a unique set of changes brought about by urbanization, with the “traditional village” no longer really existing as development and construction come here for better and worse, with Fatephur having already gone through much of this transition and
Rakkar just beginning to feel its effects, giving its residents and community a chance to decide how they will take up and react to this development for the benefit of their village. This urbanization and development emerges from two attendant and intertwined sources: the growth and expansion of Dharamsala’s tourism industry and the broader movement of internal Indian migrants from the city to the country. One of my informants placed the development of Rakkar and Fatephur within these two broader processes, arguing that if “you had been here five to ten years ago, you would see that this used to be a completely different place, a very traditional village bound society. It has only been in this interval that people have ‘discovered’ Dharmsala, bringing with it all sorts of development. [This place] has become a very affluent village…compared to most other Indian villages, which has been good and bad for locals and villagers, bringing money from outside but also bringing western and other culture to the area that threatens them.” She connects this spread of development and culture in Rakkar to the
“discovery of Dharamsala” as a site of spiritual tourism and ex-urban residence for former city- dwellers, spreading down from Dharamsala proper through the commercialization of spirituality occurring here, with all the “Baba G’s” or spiritual guides coming down from Dharamsala and starting their own ashrams and retreats, settling in the hills of the surrounding area, bringing the tourist infrastructure with them. It is within this context that I can now approach Ghoomakad and fit it into this complex of tourist and ex-urban migrant development and urbanization. Now that I have provided a clearer picture of the larger socio-spatial formation in which Ghoomakad is located, I will now look at the history and founding of Ghoomakad itself. By considering the
288 founding of Ghoomakad, and the role it plays in the surrounding area, I will set the stage for beginning to unpack the unique populations of digital nomads Ghoomakad attracts and understand how it becomes a site of mobility routing and connecting them to the surrounding socio-spatial formation and beyond.
The Founding of Ghoomakad
Ghoomakad, which in Hindi means ‘Somebody who's all the time traveling around who has no resting place and as such goes from one place to another’ was started by Mohinder Sharma and his cousin in 2010 as a homestay catering to city-dwellers and international travelers looking to get back to basics. Mohinder comes from a family of Gaddi nomads, nomadic shepherds who grazed their cattle and roamed from the Himalayas down to Punjab and back for generations, coming to these very mountains in the summer to escape the heat and moving south in the winter. Mohinder says his family had no home, travelling with their flock, living in caves and tents, “surviving on whatever nature was providing” generation to generation until the effects of
Indian Independence from British rule reached Himachal Pradesh in his Father’s and
Grandfather’s lifetime. This is when the first independent Indian Government began conducting research on the nomadic tribes like his, trying to figure out what to do with them in the new
Indian Nation-State. The government viewed the nomadic mobility of tribes like Mohinder’s as an impediment to the building of a United Indian Nation and saw their settling in place as key to their education and formation as Indian citizens. In order to fix them in place, they offered
Mohinder’s Grandfather and other members of his tribe a fixed amount of land and tenure to it.
Mohinder’s family built their houses here on this government provided land in the 1970s and he became the first in his generation to attend the State Village School along with his brother and
289 sister. He then went on, with the help of tribal scholarships, to get Masters’ degrees in
Economics and Literature.
After completing his studies, Mohinder began working for the International NGO Nishta sited right next to his family land and village. Nishta is an International Development Non-Profit focusing on aiding women and children through health, education and environmental projects, a collaboration of agencies and funders from Austria, Germany and Spain. Mohinder serves as a local community contact, bookkeeper and program manager for Nishta. He explained that while working at Nishta, he had come across a lot of city-dwellers and foreigners coming to Nishta to work on their various development projects. He really enjoyed and valued the cosmopolitan experiences and conversations he would have with these visitors, he himself never having left the state of Himachal Pradesh, discussing the differences between the visitor’s home country’s economy, social structure, family structure, and city environment in distinction to that of his home mountain village. These visitors also became quite taken with the rural village life and, using the mud hut cottage his grandfather built in the 1980s, Mohinder started renting out his home to these visitors. These experiences hosting foreigners and city-dwellers gave Mohinder the impression that the city had affected people for the worse, that these people have lost something that he saw them regaining when they stayed in his village: a connection to nature, village hospitality and socialization, a community. This drove him to want to preserve this area, his home, from the corrupting influences of the city, but to also offer it up to the city and world weary. He continued hosting travelers in his grandfather’s original house and eventually built a second mud hut to house more people, building up a small amount of money from the rent they paid.
290 In 2010, Mohinder sat down with his cousin and talked about expanding this current set up into a more intentional international village home stay experience in the mountains. They made a webpage and from there Ghoomakad was up and running. Ghoomakad was meant to be a communal and spiritual place, a community retreat for people from the city who wanted to get away and get back to nature to do purposeful work or at the very least something intentional. To achieve this end, Mohinder used to only choose certain people to come and stay here. He wanted the same kind of people here for the same kind of purpose. He did not “want Ghoomakad and this area to be a smart city but instead a smart village. If you want a hotel, or to go drinking, go to McLeod [Ganj], this is not what this place is meant for.” He wanted to combine the cosmopolitanism of the city with the community of the village, to this end creating and hosting community nights on Saturdays where residents and villagers get together and get to know one another and share what they are working on as well as play music and interact with one another.
Mohinder also offered his residents hiking treks to nearby mountains, offering up survival training and imparting his nomadic wisdom of how to survive in the region. Mohinder also maintains a farm and garden on the Ghoomakad land where he grows some of the food provided to residents and gives them the ability to volunteer on the farm and learn to grow food themselves. He also owns the local Animal Rescue which serves as a draw for international volunteers and travelers, acting as another source of residents to the space.
This homestay version of Ghoomakad drew people in and Mohinder earned a little bit of money here and there, though there were seldom residents who came and stayed for a long period of time or came more than once. As Ghoomakad continued, Mohinder remained open to suggestions made by his visitors about how to draw more people in, paving the way for
Ghoomakad’s pivot from a homestay to a digital nomad haven. This pivot was made possible by
291 the suggestion of one particular visitor, Ayush Ghai, the head of a Tech Team called Mindgrep from Bangalore. Ayush was an IIT Alumni who had worked for big western tech firms in the US and Europe before deciding to come back to India to both start his own company as well as get back to nature and his own culture. He was fed up with the western business culture and lifestyle, its pursuit of material gain, and wanted to escape the city for a simpler life. He had established his company in Bangalore and was looking for the opportunity to explore his ideas about the return to nature and the search for inner growth, and in so doing wanted to take his team on a remote work-cation to the mountains. This is how Mohinder came into contact with Ayush:
“They were from city of Bangalore and stressed out of by the office life and they were very happy working here, they were rapidly progressing and that's how [Ghoomakad] started leaning towards the techie population. Then more people were coming to work in a foreign friend circle and people were telling [others] about [the space] by [word of] mouth."
Impressed and taken by his experience working remotely at Ghoomakad, Ayush moved
Mindgrep to Dharamsala and joined in a partnership with Mohinder to grow Ghoomakad into a co-living and co-working space focused on attracting digital nomads and remote workers in addition to the populations Mohinder had already been attracting. To do this beyond the word of mouth that Ayush was able to spread to his tech worker community in Bangalore, Ghoomakad began hosting tech focused events and camps to draw urban tech workers to the area, a combination of chartered work-cations with different companies, to weekend mountain getaways, to skill and knowledge focused technology bootcamps.
As these events began to take off, they realized they were in need of a space where their residents could work together so Mohinder began building up Ghoomakad’s tech infrastructure and hosting capacity from the original two homestay mudhut cottages, adding a coworking space, two dorms, a treehouse apartment, a camping site with tents in the farm and a community
292 kitchen using local material, grains and even local people from the village in an intentional effort to spread the gains of Ghoomakad to the surrounding area. By the end of the first year, they had run 22 camps, and become a facility which could accommodate 40-50 people, with a coworking space that can host 20+ people with reliable Wi-Fi and electricity, forging themselves as a veritable digital nomad haven. Ghoomakad grew in prominence as Ayush, a prominent member of the Indian Tech Community, brought many flagship events to the space, including HillHacks, an annual Technology Conference and Hacking Event, as well as music and cultural festivals, setting up the conditions to anchor a digital influx into this small Himalayan village. This acted to bring in both new visitors from the city as well as returning residents who come back every summer, with some even moving to Rakkar for the long haul in houses and homestays near
Ghoomakad to partake in its growing tech community. Mohinder describes these outcomes by re-iterating his idea of Ghoomakad as a Smart-Village, the idea that you “Don't [have to] go to a city, city will come to you. People will come to experience the lifestyle”.
As Ghoomakad progressed over the years, Mohinder and Ayush went their separate ways and the task of running Ghoomakad became too much for Mohinder to manage on his own while working his day job at Nishta. Mohinder handed over management to three techies -- Suraj,
Ankit and Prashant -- who had gone to boarding school in Himachal Pradesh in their youth, come to multiple events hosted at Ghoomakad over the years, and partaken in a similar coding camp co-living space experiences outside Bangalore. They had organized their own tech worker and backpacker-centric events and community, Remote Explorers, bringing together people from
India and abroad. As managers of the space, these three techies continued organizing and hosting events at Ghoomakad while at the same time working to build a longer-term community there, an in-place and seasonal social network they could draw on for support while they ran their own
293 remote contracting companies. They also saw the potential to use the space to attract, train, and cater to a potential labor force of young Indians that wanted both new life experiences but also to gain skills to enter the workforce. My two months at Ghoomakad, the fieldwork serving as the data source for this chapter, took place under the management of these three techies and through the transition to a new management team. A digital influx has appeared in the Himalayas, but what exactly brings these techies here? How do the mobilities and desires of this diverse population connect to Ghoomakad? What do they see and desire in it? What do they add?
The Dharamsala Typology: The Digital Nomads of Ghoomakad
In this chapter, I will begin to chart the shifting and fluid place-based typology of digital nomads found residing in Ghoomakad, attempting to make sense of the particular conditions under which they relate to this off-the-map location. The typology will proceed by giving scaling accounts of the different informants I encountered in Ghoomakad from backpackers to the distributed company, specifically looking at the following reference groups: Global Nomads and
Offbeat Backpackers; Transitioners and Bootcampers; Remote Employees and Contractors; ending with Solopreneurs and Remote Companies. I will place these populations in relation to each other based on how their urban prospecting logics fall on the continuum from labor to capital, from the primacy of concerns of the self versus those of employment and, in the instance of Dharamsala, from how integrated they are into the both the location itself as well as global divisions of labor. Moving along the spectrum, the populations encountered in Ghoomakad will move from being untethered, mobile and relatively disconnected from global production processes on one end to increasingly embedded in Dharamsala itself and further integrated into global production flows on the other. As I move in the typology from the global nomad to the
294 distributed company, the self-consciousness of digital nomadhood will begin to grow sharper, these figures beginning to employ the moniker “digital nomad” to refer to themselves and connect their mobility to representations they encountered already existing in the world. Along with this self-awareness, there will be a corresponding movement from the pursuit of individual desires to a search for community. From this basis, I will begin to disaggregate the digital nomad subjects who site Dharamsala, and Offbeat Cities in general, as destinations of their mobility and unpack how their interactions with these locations and each other shape and contest the continued terms on which their subjectivities are formed. These interactions with Dharamsala and each other will impact their future mobilities while creating new practices and subject positions that could offer potential fixes to the new urban crisis or further perpetuate it elsewhere.
Global Nomads, Backpackers and their Discontents
Normally backpackers conjure the image of footloose Europeans and Americans with large backpacks moving from city to city, hostel to hostel, partying and seeking out unique and engaging cultural experiences, exemplified by D’Andrea’s (2007) figure of the Global Nomad.
This exemplified backpacker does exist in McLeod Ganj, but less so in Ghoomakad, with the
Global Nomad present as an adjacent and parallel population that backpackers who arrive at
Ghoomakad define themselves against. Many of the backpackers and social travelers residing at
Ghoomakad start out among these Global Nomad types, living in the western hostel-café compounds up in McLeod Ganj isolated amongst themselves, who then want to escape these western tourist enclaves to “authentically” experience the countries they are in, driving them towards places like Rakkar and Ghoomakad. In order to understand this transition, I will start by
295 approaching the backpacker communities living proximate to Ghoomakad from which its
Offbeat backpacker community is drawn. Only then can I begin to understand why they choose
Ghoomakad as a site of mobility in distinction to Global Nomadism, as both an outgrowth of and divergence from it. I will then follow this up with biographical vignettes of two Ghoomakad
Offbeat backpackers to understand the version of this sub-population drawn to Rakkar.
McLeod’s Global Nomads
To begin, I will describe my experience at a meditation retreat at the Thomasaling Nunnery in Fatephur where I encountered the most representative cases of Global Nomad backpackers I came across, in their segregated and isolated fashion, taking a retreat from McLeod Ganj but not from the western expat communities and relations they were accustomed to. In my two months, I had seen almost no westerners outside of Ghoomakad, McLeod Ganj and the borders of
Norbulingka, certainly almost none in the streets and stores of Rakkar and Fatepuhr; yet, when I crossed the gated-stream boundary into Thomsaling, I was confronted by a mass of western
European, American, and Australian backpackers, a whole staff of Western European Nuns, and a small minority of Indian tourists, the demographics in the surrounding area completely inverted in the gated enclave of the Nunnery. The large group I met and socialized with had spent all their time in McLeod Ganj and its village suburbs of Dharamkot, and Bhagsou, having no idea that anything else really existed outside of it, especially this place. They loved how far out and removed this place was, so close to the mountains and nature, praising its remoteness in contrast to the touristy nature of McLeod Ganj. They spent the majority of their time in McLeod in cafes meeting new people and talking the day away. That was how many of them here got to know each other and make their way here. I will briefly introduce a few members of this group to
296 begin to sketch the type of Global Nomad found in McLeod, forming the backdrop from which
Ghoomakad’s Offbeat backpackers emerge.
One member of this group was a late-twenties Dutch man. He studied architecture in school and came here 3 months ago to work on an architecture project in Nepal. The program was part of a non-profit which fundraises all over Europe and the world, an activity he performed when he was back home, to build houses abroad through volunteer work and amateur architecture.
Volunteers had to pay 300 INR a day for food, while their lodging was covered by the fundraising they did. The project had wrapped up for the year due to the change in seasons, with the head architect leaving to go build houses in Syria. The Dutch man needed to come back in 6-
8 months and did not know what to do in the intervening time. He came to Dharamsala to “re- center” himself after the project, hanging out in Dharamkot and Bhagsou, smoking hash and meeting other backpackers. The Dutch man came to Nepal and Dharmasala for a liminal escape from his everyday life in Norway, an existence prepared for while fundraising back home, one ultimately limited by the length of project whose premature ending left him caught in limbo. His mobility was temporary in nature, appearing here as more of a sabbatical and retreat turned into a situation of limbo and indecision, his employment and source of shelter caught up with the project itself and the work and fundraising he did back in Norway.
Another member of this group was a twenty-something Sri Lankan-American man who is currently “based” in Denver. He has spent the past few years practicing mediation and circulating in what he refers to as the “alternative circles and networks of cities in the US citing
Denver, Berkeley, and the Berkshires in Massachusetts and other areas where he has lived in opposition to massified citieslxxv. Amidst his cycling through this alternative circle of cities, he
297 participated in different mediation retreats, both as participant, staff and volunteer, working in hostels and other community centers. He has been in India and Nepal for the past few months with his mother, exposing her to mediation and the way of life that means so much to him. This
Denver man approaches his mobility as a journey, a series of movements with cohesive purpose and narrative given both by the set of identified “alternative” locales he cycles between, their partaking in a certain shared alternativeness, as well as by the meditation practice he continues and expands upon in each location. The similarity in the types of employment and residence he seeks in each alternative locale also lends itself a continuity between places; though his location may change, his lifestyle, and source of income and shelter, stays the same. Mobility for him is periodic, changing with the seasons, but moving from enclave to enclave which allows him to continue a similar life, integrating travel more deeply into his life while also making him slightly more rooted than some of the footloose travelers he interacts with.
The last member of this group was an early-to-mid thirties British woman from London,
Lucy, who has been traveling around India and Nepal for the past 8 months. She identifies as a full-time traveler and does not ever want to go back to London. She has been going from mediation course to mediation course, learning about Buddhism as she goes back and forth between the two countries. She has made use of workaway.info to keep her travels alive and save her budget, having worked at hostels and vineyards in exchange for room and board. She has also used it to travel around South America and Europe in the past, having spent a long time on the backpacker circuit. Lucy was taken by the Nunnery and the area around it, finding herself interested in experiencing a bit of the “remote village life” and looking for an “offbeat” place, somewhere less touristy, to stay for a few days before she leaves back for Nepal. She even began to consider residing at Ghoomakad shortly after hearing me describe it. Lucy claims she wants to
298 transition into becoming a digital nomad, needing to find a steady source of income to keep her travels going, to be a backpacker indefinitely. Lucy is a seasoned backpacker, growing discontent with the tourist side of backpacking, tired of the “off on its own” enclave nature of the backpacker circuit, and looking for a more “offbeat”, rooted and authentic experience. Lucy has embraced the mobile lifestyle and is in it for the long haul, trying to carry it on into perpetuity, having had experience with the limited nature of backpacker employment which she is looking to surmount by engaging in remote work.
This concern with income and flirtation with the idea of becoming a digital nomad is something shared by all of these global nomad backpackers, with the man from Denver saying that he has met a bunch of people up in Dharamkot who are digital nomads, traveling and working from the cafes, something he would love to do but does not know how. They all comment that the single biggest obstacle they face as backpackers is how to make money while traveling to continue and support this type of lifestyle, the promise of working remotely from your computer and pulling in an income from anywhere offering itself up as the panacea to their condition. The standards for what type of remote work they are willing to engage in, however, is regulated by the values of authenticity and flight that brought them to this lifestyle in the first place, exemplified by a conversation I had between the Dutch man and Lucy. A bit frustrated after discussing the limited routes available that make continuing backpacking possible, Lucy exclaimed she wanted to transition into becoming a digital nomad by starting a personal travel blog. The blog would act as a guide to backpackers who want to have a more “offbeat” authentic and respectful experience of different countries while also being respectful of locals. Her hope was to get advertising on the site once it was running to make some income and build a portfolio for freelance writing. I mentioned how digital marketing remote gigs are in big supply, as well as
299 teaching English online. She replied that she has avoided doing these things because she did not want to do that work, it would not jive with the experience she was trying to carve out. She did not want to have a normal job she does remotely, but to make her passion profitable. She said this in a curt manner, signaling that, to her, taking a more normal remote gig would be selling out. The Dutch man had less of a high idealistic bar on the type of work he would perform, responding that any of those options sound like good gigs, he just has to find out how to do it.
Among these McLeod backpackers, and those veterans who have travelled the circuit from enclave to enclave, some have begun to see that within these enclaves they really only ever interact with other western backpackers. This continued experience begins challenging the harsh line they set up between being a tourist and being the “authentic travelers” they think they are.
When more seasoned backpackers come to recognize and acknowledge this, they start to crave unique and non-tourist experiences, to seek out the “offbeat”. This lifestyle discontent also runs up against and is influenced by the natural constraint of their backpacking lifestyles: the lack of any income or productive activity to sustain it, driving them to look for other means to continue their mobility. This becomes something which comes to weigh on them at different points, always the specter hanging over their heads, ending this alternative lifestyle or at least forming a formidable obstacle to its continuation. Now that digital nomadism, and the remote work that serves as its bedrock of possibility, is popping up as a viable option, they see it as a possible model and opportunity to exploit, a way to carry over this lifestyle into infinity. This panacea to their condition, however, does come with attendant costs, the form of remote work and the manner of its integration into their livelihoods forming the grounds upon which conflicting values are worked out, and new identities and ends set up for pursuit and actualization. I will
300 now pivot to look at how the global nomads brushing up against digital nomadhood at
Ghoomakad are influenced and shaped differently by it.
Ghoomakad’s Offbeat Backpackers
Ghoomakad’s backpackers share much in common with the global nomads circulating in the hostels and retreats populating the hills around them, representing the continuation of logics and paths of mobility brought up in the examples above, namely of a search for the offbeat and authentic. They set themselves apart from the above examples mainly by their residence at
Ghoomakad, escaping western tourist enclaves, and being exposed to and interacting with the other unique populations present in this particular co-living space. Backpackers reaching
Ghoomakad are discontent with the segregated and enclosed nature of life circulating in global nomad circuits of “alternative” locations, recognizing them as separate expatriate communities set apart from the countries they are located in, with limited types of interactions and activities of experience and expression possible. They also question the longevity of the global nomad experience and try to reconcile the pursuit of alternative experiences with a desire to maximize their continued life chances without narrowing their ability to return to the mainstream. Their brushes with remote workers and the other sub-populations at Ghoomakad show them different means to these ends, while also sharing their alternative values and zeal for unique experiences with these other populations. I will demonstrate the form these dynamics take by describing the paths of mobility of two Offbeat Backpackers I met at Ghoomakad and the directions these cases take across the spectrum of digital nomadhood
301 The first case I want to demonstrate is that of Ash, an Iranian-Canadian backpacker who was looking for an offbeat trip, coming to Ghoomakad and India in general to expose himself to new and authentic lifeworlds while gaining career experience before beginning Veterinary
School. Before Ash came to India, he had been completing a Masters’ in Science at a Canadian
University near Toronto. He had originally wanted to be a doctor but was uncertain of whether he wanted to continue down that path. He came across a fully-funded Masters’ in Science
Program at a University near his parents’ house which would allow him to commute while saving money and figured he could see what the medical science field looked like. For him, getting his Masters’ was a way to figure his life out, giving a potential career path a try while not incurring any debt. During his Masters’, he worked as a stipended research assistant doing medical stem-cell studies on mice in a University lab. The experience made it clear to him that he did not want to continue doing medical research, ruling out the pursuit of a PhD that would have been the next step in that career trajectory. It did show him that he liked working with animals in a medical capacity. Reaching a crossroads at the end of his Masters’, Ash decided to take six months off to immerse himself in travel and other cultures, exploring his horizons before choosing a particular path. This is the trajectory that brought him to Ghoomakad, spending three months in India, two in Dharamsala and one in Goa, before heading back to Canada. After that, him and his girlfriend are going to Portugal to stay at her family house in the Azores for another two months before he returns home for a gap year at the end of which he will potentially start applying to Veterinary Schools.
To guide and determine where he would visit, he decided he wanted to do something structured while traveling so he looked into volunteering at an animal rescues in different locations, both to have destinations and places to stay as well as to experiment with whether he
302 would enjoy veterinary work in the future. He was thinking of travelling to Thailand and India, both offering unique cultural differences while also having robust animal rescue and volunteering infrastructures. In anticipation, he had applied for an India visa, and began scouring animal rescue websites attempting to set up his trip. He ended up coming here to Dharamsala, and Rakkar specifically, because the Dharamsala Animal Rescue that Mohinder owns was one of the few that returned his emails quickly and had the most professional appearance. Ultimately it was a happy coincidence that he ended up in Dharamsala out of all of India, having just been looking for reliable volunteer work at an animal rescue. It was upon arriving at the Animal
Rescue that the people working there put him onto Ghoomakad for lodging, the two being connected by Mohinder’s ownership of each and the latter used as a source of housing for volunteers. He quickly came to really like and appreciate Ghoomakad, the sense of community being created their and fostered between residents, volunteers and locals. He really appreciated the lack of “tourists”, and was really getting to know locals, making quick and close friends with
Ankit, Suraj, and the others running the space. He spent his first month working at the animal rescue, paling around with villagers, and taking periodic trips to McLeod Ganj to hear the Dalai
Lama talk, eat Tibetan momo dumplings, and hang out in the mountain cafes. Ash brought people from Ghoomakad with him, acting as a bridge between those hanging out in Rakkar for the remote experience and the adventurous excitement that backpackers like Ash travelled for.
According to his plan, Ash reluctantly left Dharamsala to travel to Goa, the next leg of his trip, planning to come back again for a week or so to say goodbye before he went back to Canada.
Ash stayed in Goa for a month and a half, living in a house by the beach with a bunch of western backbackers of the Global Nomad variety where he met Dan, an English backpacker from
London who serves as the other case of “Offbeat Backpack” explored below. While in Goa, Ash
303 greatly enjoyed visiting the local market stalls daily, walking on the beach, and experiencing the different and unique mixes of culture that Goa had to offer, the influences and interspersed architecture of Portugal, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism setting it apart from the rest of
India as well as other parts of the world in general.
Ash did not greatly enjoy his time in Goa, complaining that the house he was staying in was infested with bugs and that Goa in the summer months was so uncomfortably and unbearably hot. He also had a great distaste for the area he was staying in and the backpacking peers he was surrounded by, with all these western tourists occupying this beach neighborhood just getting drunk and being disrespectful. He did not necessarily seek to occupy a moral high ground in relation to his fellow backpackers, but merely saw qualitative differences between the types of people he met and their corresponding interactions in hostels and the backpacking circuit, versus meeting people volunteering and in places like Ghoomakad, claiming these differences were neither good or bad. In hostels and backpacker enclaves, he said you mainly meet people through drinking and partying, with the content of your conversations and interactions narrowly focused on discussing where you are traveling and what you have done, exchanging place resumes. He wanted more than to kick around with global nomads, to actually immerse himself in the culture and meet locals and actual Indians like he had done in
Dharamsala. Since he was not enjoying his time in Goa, he decided to return to Ghoomakad early, feeling like he had not spent enough time there the first time around and wanted to be able to say he got to “know the area”. He had regaled his fellow Goa backpacker Dan with his time in
Dharamsala and the differences between this touristic backpacker culture and the more rooted
304 and local experience he believed Ghoomakad shaped and provided, ultimately convincing Dan to join him.
I met Ash and Dan at Ghoomakad shortly after his re-arrival in Dharamsala. In his remaining time in the area, he ended up making one last trip to McLeod to gather souvenirs for his friends and family, wrapped up volunteering at the Animal Rescue, and rented a motorcycle for a four day road trip to the other hill stations of Bir and Manali with a friend from Bangalore that he met at Ghoomakad. After this, Ash left to return to Canada, then to Portugal for a few months before returning home to apply for Veterinary School. Ash explained that he planned to spend his gap year choosing where to go to Veterinary School, weighing the factors impinging on where he would decide to invest his future mobility. He explained that he really only had one option for
Veterinary School in Canada because a lot of the spots were determined by residence. As such, he wants to apply to a University in Toronto, but also wants to extend his search to Veterinary
Schools in Ireland and Australia. He says he would rather spend four years living in Ireland than at home. He is also considering places in the Caribbean that might be affiliated with the United
States for a good education and a secure professional pipeline in the future. If and when he decides to return home, he would have to take the exams and attain the certifications to come back and be a Veterinarian in Canada. For Ash, deciding where to apply for Veterinary School is about mixing the educational and professional opportunities he is pursuing with the travel experiences and style of life available elsewhere. This can be viewed as an extension of the logics he employed on his backpacking trip to India that were refined and strengthened by his experiences there.
305 The second case I want to describe is that of Dan, an English backpacker who came to travel around India and Nepal in order to escape his life in London, brushing up against remote workers at Ghoomakad who ultimately drove him to want attempt to be a digital nomad. Dan was a mid- twenties man who, before coming to Ghoomakad, was working in London at a company that put together Stag and Hen parties. He said he was quite good at it but that he worked long hours,
“the 9 to 5 grind and then some” and did not see a future in the company. He did not have any real passion for the work and realized he was paying exorbitant rent to live in London, working himself ragged while having no time for anything else. He found the life he was living in London to be empty, attempting to fill it with meaning by volunteering at local Buddhist temple which drove him to want to pursue more meaningful experiences and to work on his inner self. He was really unhappy and felt trapped in London, so he decided to sell everything and go traveling to figure his life out, to be spontaneous and experience different cultures. Essentially, he wanted to try to find happiness outside of the structures offered to him by his home country, his volunteer work and experiences at the Buddhist temple giving him a first taste of difference. He decided to leave for India and travel indefinitely, not knowing where he would stop and when he would come back, with everyone in his life telling him was crazy. He did not care and jumped on a plane to Goa with his backpack, his savings, and a guitar. He then attached himself to Ash and came here to Dharamsala, looking to move along on his travels every month or two. Since being in Dharamsala, he had been to McLeod Ganj to see the Dalai Lama talk, gone on camping and motorcycle trips in the area, started practicing meditation daily, and joined Ash volunteering over at the animal rescue, even taking on the task of managing their social media feed to gain experience in digital marketing.
306 While staying at Ghoomakad, Dan spent a fair amount of time in the co-working space meeting the solopreneurs, contractors, and remote workers we will come to meet in the sections below. Dan explained to me that everyone at Ghoomakad is doing remote work and that since being here he is looking at getting into it, having thought about it before coming but not knowing how to really get started. After meeting everyone here and seeing them teach themselves, he wants to try it himself while he still has access to their advice and expertise. He wants to learn to code and do some freelance writing, pursuing the development of these two skills in pursuit of potential income streams. To build on his freelance writing potentials, Dan is running the social media for the animal rescue shelter and trying to start building a portfolio to leverage other writing and digital marketing work in the future. For the time being, he was going to continue volunteering at the shelter while trying to figure out the “remote work thing” for this leg of his journey.
Dan would be offered a few opportunities that would offer different paths of livelihood and mobility during his time at Ghoomakad, ultimately accepting and declining different options based on the fit he felt with the ways of life they offered. One such opportunity came when, as a result of talking to Mohinder about his digital marketing work for the Animal Rescue, Mohinder offered Dan the opportunity to work at a 10-day long Digital Marketing Camp being hosted at
Ghoomakad, giving him both the opportunity to learn at the camp, make contacts with digital marketing professionals, and have work to be able to sell himself on. Dan seriously considered the offer for a week or so but decided he did not want to work 7am to 4pm just like a full-time job. He told them he did not come to India to just get another job that he could have had back home, that he wanted to get into digital marketing to break with the full-time job structure and the life it offered; he wanted a side gig not a career. Shortly after he declined the Digital
307 Marketing Camp job, the Animal Rescue promoted him from an unpaid volunteer to a stipended part-time worker running and coordinating its social media presence. The small stipend would allow him to start adding to the savings that was financing his travel and build for continued mobility, his plan being to save up enough to buy a motorcycle to travel around India and Nepal.
In order to save more of this stipend, as well as give himself more space to practice meditation and try out “village life”, Dan moved to a cheaper house down the road from Ghoomakad with a fellow resident: Rolli a Non-Resident Indian Remote Worker who moved to Dharamsala to escape the West and the City, raise her son, and return to nature. The two moved to a house down the road, five minutes from the animal rescue, owned by a military veteran who lived with his family on the first floor, while they occupied a two-room apartment on the second floor. The idea was that both Dan and Rolli would work from the apartment and help each other in both spiritual pursuits and making this life in the village possible.
Dan was able to put a life together in roughly two weeks, a job, lodging, roommate, and all as he moved out of Ghoomakad to root himself more in the local area. He felt like it was meant to be, not having planned any of it; it just happened serendipitously. He brought up how different it was that here you can put together a life so quickly, in terms of finding a place to live but being leave whenever you wanted. He contrasted this to London where he claimed you are always locked into a 12-month lease. He thought this living constraint was illustrative of the broader “western” mindset, helping explain why people in the West are always thinking in the future, that the structure of living is so rigid that you have to plan really far ahead which does not allow you to live in the moment and go with the whims and emotions of the day, ultimately serving as a chief obstacle to happiness. This is what ultimately propelled him to be mobile, this desire to live in the present without locking himself into the future, to be fluid and ephemeral.
308 His settling down here in Dharamsala did not come without doubt however, as he also struggled with the question of figuring out how long to stay. He explained that he left London to keep traveling, to see as much as he could and go with the journey, that ultimately he does not want to be here too long even if he likes it, the point of his mobility not being to just start over somewhere else but to learn by traveling. This relationship to his own mobility parallels his relationship to employment, looking to have freedom and variety in the places and jobs he pursues, trying them on and committing to nothing, exploring different possibilities for his existence while fleeing structure and complacency. Dan would ultimately leave Rakkar two weeks after he moved into the house with Rolli, living in the village having been much more of a transition than he thought it would be, sticking out as the Englishman outsider and not knowing the language or customs. He underestimated the authenticity of Ghoomakad, in terms of it being representative of life in Rakkar, and India in general. He bought a motorcycle and moved to
McLeod Ganj with western volunteers at the Animal Rescue, continuing to work there while commuting back and forth when he needed to and working remotely when possible. This carried on for a few weeks until he left the job and Dharamsala for good, jumping on his motorcycle and heading south from city to city, linking back up with global nomads in backpacker enclaves, and dabbling in other forms of employment and side gigs along the way inlcuding working as a film extra and starting a meditation video channel among other things.
One of the things that sets Ghoomakad’s Offbeat Backpackers apart is a desire to mix the practical with the adventurous, to pursue a variety of more fringe life experiences while at the same building a base for one’s future career and prosperity. This sets them apart from the “more pure” global nomads who flee from the mainstream and seek to live outside of it. There is here an interest in carving out an alternative lifeworld while staying connected to the mainstream,
309 recognizing the limits and ephemerality of the backpacker lifestyle. Ash and Dan reveal two approaches to one of the main tensions that Offbeat Backpackers are trying to explore and manage in their flights of mobility: (1) the desire to pursue unique, ephemeral life experiences, and (2) having to reckon these desires against the practical means of reproducing and sustaining oneself. In these two cases, the differences in approach to reconciling this tension hinge on each person’s relationship to structure in general. Ash seeks to stay connected to career and educational structures, recognizing that he cannot really leave them behind in the long-run and must make decisions based on what will allow him a comfortable future when backpacking is done. Dan, on the other hand, shirks structure at every turn, his mobility itself being a flight from his perception that he was locked into employment and housing relations which forced a structure on his future that was hard to break with. He chose to break completely and approaches both place and employment options as temporary and fluid, moving between them and seeing in remote work the potential ability to remain fluid. In both cases there is a real valuation of reduced structure, the free flow, the informal as itself something of value, the notion of the structured future versus living in the moment. The choice of structure or fluidity appears to be a choice to be made by this sub-population, of when and under what circumstances each should be pursued and taken advantage of given their life situations. This type of mobility is episodic, a mix of ephemeral experiences and travel that people like Ash attempt to leverage into longer footholds in other countries, more akin to expat migration and brain circulation dynamics than necessarily the frequent and wandering mobility of global nomads. This position exists between the global nomad and the expatriate as an interstitial position traversed by people moving between the lifestyles and life chances of each figure, a potentially ephemeral and episodic position occupied by people in moments of life transition.
310 Transitioners and Bootcampers
Offbeat backpackers find themselves largely changed and influenced by the other populations they encounter at Ghoomakad, their horizons of possibility opened up by what they see these others accomplishing in regard to work and lifestyle. One of the influential populations they encounter are the Transitioners and Bootcampers who are a heterogenous mixture of young college graduates, often having just left their first jobs in cities having found themselves frustrated by the opportunities they were presented with in their already chosen career paths.
They come to Ghoomakad to take a break from their lives, treating the space as a waystation providing space and time to help them transition between career paths, meet similar others and learn new skills. They come to Dharamsala seeking lifestyles akin to those of Global Nomads defined by unique experiences and authenticity to one’s self while also preparing themselves to jump to global circuits of brain circulation and the possibility of becoming talented expatriates, or to change career fields completely. Transitoners and Bootcampers occupy a position in- between others that can be traversed from multiple directions, from the backpacker to the creative class, or towards remote work, ex-urban mobilities, global circulation and back.
Transitioners and Bootcampers are the population of Ghoomakad residents that Offbeat backpackers can most easily move into. The difference between these populations is largely a difference the level of commitment given to a particular life direction, and thus of the tasks and activities a member of this population is willing to engage in. Transitioners and Bootcampers are willing to engage in more long-term investment in particular skills related to career practicality over purely issues of lifestyle and enjoyment. Their mobility to the mountains is similarly motivated by a desire for liminality and unique experiences; but, its juxtaposition to the other chapters and destinations in the transitioners’ life is one of ellipses, a break between life events,
311 as opposed to being a sentence in its own right. While backpackers want this liminality to be the cast of their whole lives, transitioners carve out this liminal mobility to aid them in broader life transitions, the stage from which they propel themselves to different life possibilities in various locations. These moments of transition can and do occur in major global cities; however, global cities demand a relatively immediate transition, to plug in and anchor yourself to residence and employment as evidenced by the difference in the types of transitioners found at the PodShare in
Los Angeles. Offbeat” locations like Dharamsala allow for this type of liminal reflexive time and environment far from the normal boundaries of their lives and all its reminders.
From Bootcamp to Global Brain Circulation
The first case of transitioner I want to present is that of a young contracting techie about to make a jump to circuits of global brain circulation and becoming a Non-Resident Indian.
Shubham was an Indian man in his mid-twenties from the state of Rajasthan to the south, a software developer who came to Ghoomakad for a month-long coding and knowledge sharing retreat: One Month Campus. His time here at the coding bootcamp served him as both a networking vacation and a time of liminality between two parts of his life. He would be escaping the summer heat of Rajasthan and Pune while preparing to transition and embark abroad on a stint of global mobility to complete a Masters’ in Computer Science in the US. A trail of mobility and career transition paved the way for Shubham’s presence at Ghoomakad. He grew up and attended primary school in Bikaner, Rajasthan, after which he completed his Bachelor’s in Computer Science at Amity University in Jaipur. After graduation, he got a job in IT at a big company in Jaipur but ended up hating it: the dullness of the work, the long hours and rigid corporate structure, the inability to experiment and try new things, etc. He quit and went into
312 freelancing software development work and spent the next two years traveling around India to
Bangalore, Chennai, Pune and a few other cities, eventually landing and living in Pune for the past three years. He enjoyed freelancing and being on the move but was feeling like he was not growing enough in terms of the projects he was working on and the skills he was learning, also having seen enough of India to want to experience living somewhere else. He wanted to take
“the next logical career step for an Indian Software Developer”: get a Masters’ in Computer
Science in the US. He applied to a few schools in the US and decided to attend SUNY Buffalo where he would be starting in the Fall.
With his move to the US looming a few months down the road, Shubham found himself in-between jobs in Pune with too much time to sit around and do nothing, and not enough time to get fully invested in a new job, spending his days learning skills online and waiting for his new life to begin. He figured he could do what he had been doing at home anywhere while meeting new people and seeing a different part of the country. He started looking for bootcamps and retreats, looking in the mountains because he liked trekking and had hiked in Rishikesh and
Manali before, and came across Ghoomakad and “One Month Campus” on Facebook. One
Month Campus was an event put on by Ankit, Suraj, and Prashant, the managers of Ghoomakad after Mohinder and Ayush, aimed at creating a space and learning model that mixed the best of intensive coding bootcamps with the freedom, socialization and creativity of a summer nature retreat atmosphere. The camp, as much as, if not more than, its location in Dharamsala, was exactly the type of retreat and experience Shubham was looking for, a liminal space to help him prepare for and ready himself for his transition to the US. He convinced another freelancing friend of his in Pune to join him, and together they travelled north to Ghoomakad.
313 He described Ghoomakad as a good place to learn about coding and freelancing. Their weekdays at One Month Campus were comprised of morning group meditations followed by bathing in the river outback; listening to talks and lectures on various growing trends in the tech community such as bitcoin and the blockchain; having lunch with other campers exploring ideas and making fast friends; watching coding tutorials on topics like machine learning and AIlxxvi into the early afternoon; grinding on programming exercises and putting together collaborative projects into the early evening; playing soccer on the green pitch outside Ghoomakad until nightfall; and, wasting the night away with fervent discussion of future projects, travel plans and life aspirations. On the weekends, the camp’s organizers had set-up multiple excursions and outings in the nearby region. These outings took the campers to McLeod Ganj and the Dalai
Lama’s temple, on a two-day camping hike up the famed Triund Trek where they stayed at
Mohinder’s Eco Hut, as well as on an excursion to nearby Bir to go paragliding. For Shubham, the whole experience had just been the campers learning from one another, filling each other with excitement and enthusiasm over the different life, career, and technology trajectories they could explore. On the last night of One Month Campus, all the participants gathered in the co- living space and took turns sharing their takeaways from the camp and reflecting on the event.
Most of the camp-goers believed that One Month Campus had been a unique experience that they had not expected, where they bonded instantly and made life-long friends. They had no idea they would be so drawn here or so sad to return to their lives back home. They lamented that had progressed so much in their individual learning by partaking in the communal and social atmosphere of the space, many remarking that they planned to come back again next year, that they loved the community they built and they wanted to keep it alive. Shubham, like the others, walked away from One Month Campus both with new skills as well as a host of new friends and
314 colleagues, a social network which would disperse back across India, with many also making the jump to global mobility that Shubham would, a reciprocal network that could be relied on in the future for support, friendship, and learning.
One Month Campus was also only one source of residents during this period, with the campers overlapping with other resident populations like the Offbeat Backpackers and
Solopreneurs from international locales who they came to get to know fairy well, Shubham remarked that he had met many people from all over the place at Ghoomakad, from Guatemala,
Israel, the US, Canada, etc., enjoying this unique exposure to the variety of people flowing in and out of space. For Shubham, some of these individuals were the first representatives of their nations he had met in person and he engaged them with questions about their home countries, looking for useful information to make his jump abroad easier. Ghoomakad and One Month
Campus helped him bridge the gap between the different populations he was a part of, the Indian
Tech Community and the International Expat Community he would be coming to join, allowing him to make connections to each to rely on in the future. After the camp ended, Shubham left to go back to Pune for two months, then back to his parents’ house in Rajasthan for a month before he left for the US and Buffalo to start at his Masters’ in August. It would be his first time in the
US and he asked me a lot of questions about the US and Buffalo, trying to get a sense and feel for the place. While he was anchored at SUNY Buffalo, he wanted to take any opportunity to travel around and see more of the US, using the summers and breaks to travel to New York City and along the East Coast. This exploration was something he was baking into his career plans and in shaping the routes that he would take across the US, travelling around while at the same time maximizing his long-term career potential. Ultimately, Shubham was planning his sojourn
315 to the US to be a 3-5 year odyssey with an expiration date set for returning back to India. His plan was to finish his Masters’, get a job in the US, stay for a few years, learn the industry and then go back to India to start his own tech company, utilizing the skills and network he would build in the US Tech Industry. Two years after meeting him at Ghoomakad, Shubham had graduated with his Masters’ and was working a Software development job at Amazon and living in Seattle, one step further along his extended career and mobility path.
Changing Profiles: Creative Class Sector Switching
The other case of transitioner I want to present is that of Vivek Kumar, a mid-twenties Indian man originally from Agra who came to Ghoomakad and Dharamsala for a digital marketing internship at a small company based out of Ghoomakad’s co-working space. Vivek had left his job in the Stock Market sector in Delhi and was looking to make a career “profile” transition to the sector of Digital Marketing, pursuing the promise of entering the field of remote work and engaging in the mobile lifestyle that it could open up for him. Vivek moved around India frequently throughout his childhood as his father was in the Indian Army. When it came time to go to University, Vivek moved back to Agra and completed a Bachelor’s degree in Business
Administration. After graduation, Vivek moved to Delhi, explaining he did so because “that's just where the jobs were, it is the capital of India, that was the only reason I moved to Delhi."
When Vivek arrived in Delhi, he moved into the Stock Market and Finance Sector, finding the work interesting, and obtained the necessary certifications to be approved by the Security
Exchange Board of India to trade stocks and securities. He obtained a position at a securities and equity trading firm and spent the next year and half learning new skills and building up his Stock
Market “Profile”. He characterized a “profile” as both a sort of resume and outward facing
316 appearance for gaining new opportunities in this sector, as well as a concrete representation of his skills and the knowledge he has accumulated congealed into an identity that he, and others, understood him through.
Vivek was drawn to stock market work at first due purely to a nascent interest in its mechanisms and innerworkings, as well as simply by the fact that it was his first job and it was all new to him. Working in stocks and securities provided Vivek a great opportunity to learn a lot of new things regarding securities, equities, derivatives, and a mutual funds, expanding his view of the stock market and the world in general, while also broadening his horizons and giving him the itch to employ this new knowledge through trading for himself. This new knowledge and desire to employ it, however, was frustrated by his very position as a stock and security trader; as a trader, he was not allowed to put money in the stock market for himself. The Catch-22 of being a trader made it so he accumulated technical knowledge but could not benefit from it on his own behalf, forming a limit on his fulfilment in this career path and continuing on with this profile.
The job also forced Vivek to endure long repetitive hours at the workplace, doing the same thing every day, sitting in front of the stock screen from 9:15am to 3:30pm, unable to even move or look away from the screen in case he were to miss any momentary fluctuation in the stocks. With his dissatisfaction with trading growing, Vivek read up on Digital Marketing as a growing field and career path and found it promising. "So here I was, totally fed up with this kind of profile, and I just [decided to make a move to a different sector] to digital marketing.” With no experience in digital marketing and wanting to test whether this profile was for him, he enrolled in a weekend course on Digital Marketing in Delhi. The course piqued his interest and fed his appetite for the work, so much so that he decided to commit to developing his profile in this
317 direction. He dropped the course, quit his job and set out looking for digital marketing internships around the country, the idea being to take some time to think through his future while also wanting the opportunity to cut his teeth on real world work, develop marketable experience, and make industry contacts to start a career in the field.
Around the same time, Vivek’s father was reposted to a military base in Yul, a short way from Dharamsala. With this in mind, Vivek looked for opportunities in the area and found the internship posting for the digital marketing company based in Ghoomakad’s co-working space and took it. Vivek’s move was also motivated by what Dharamsala offered him as a location distinct from the environment of Delhi and the city in general. Vivek chose to come to
Dharamsala for the nice weather and views, escaping the summer heat down south, as well as the hectic and busy life of Delhi where “everyone is running in their job, they don't have any time [to rest, breathe or think], any peace.” Vivek thought his escape to Dharamsala would give him the peace to concentrate on himself, to figure out his goals in life, providing a liminal time of limbo and transition. This was the main factor that drew him to Ghoomakad and this particular internship and experience. This big transition in profiles and location was an exercise in committing himself fully to the experience, to learning something new and exploring a different life and career direction. This liminal transitionary trip to Ghoomakad and Dharamsala has made him realize that digital marketing was definitely the profile he wanted to develop and the work he wanted to do. Vivek actually works longer hours than he did at the stock exchange, working daily from 10am to 5pm, finding the work so interesting that he often works until 8pm.
Afterwards, he often heads home and continues researching the broader domain of digital marketing, filling in his knowledge gaps and learning new techniques, staying up until 2am and
318 starting all over again the next day, driven purely by curiosity and interest in the work. Vivek explained that there is just so much to know, that he learned quickly he would not get bored of this kind of profile because it presents so many interesting and novel problems and requires creativity. Since working at the internship, Vivek has gained new skills and even had a few prominent successes, like getting a client company a number one ranking on google via Search
Engine Optimization, earning praise from his co-workers who joked he must have been doing this all of his life.
His experience at Ghoomakad was also heavily shaped by his proximity to other interesting people occupying the co-working space and the interactions he had with them, explaining that the space always provided hosts of new people to get to know. Ghoomakad drew people of many stripes and varieties working in a plurality of different fields and coming from all over India and around the world, causing Vivek to bumping into the offbeat backpackers and bootcampers described above, and the remote workers and fully-fledged digital nomads that will be introduced shortly. He remarked that the type of interactions he had here were horizon expanding and educational, bumping into people working on projects in different fields and engaging in lot of skill sharing, arguing that these digital technology industry jobs absolutely rely on skill sharing between people across sectors of the industry. This is reminiscent of Annalee Saxenien’s (1996) argument about the centrality of informal reciprocity networks and skill sharing to the competitiveness and regional advantage of Silicon Valley Tech firms in the 1980s. Saxenien was writing about this interaction happening in bars and social hangouts, and amidst collisions with new people through job hopping, whereas here this type of skill sharing is occurring in new venues like Ghoomakad. Here you have contract workers and new entrants to the field colliding
319 with each other in the co-working space and engaging in informal skill sharing as they all try to bolster their own profiles and learn from one another to expand their reach in the tech sector and the types of jobs they are capable of grabbing onto. Vivek put it this way, "If [I meet] someone
[who] is from an IT field and I would like to know about that [particular] profile and what he does, I just go and chat him up”. He viewed the proximity to others in Ghoomakad as a tool he could use to learn things from people in various fields, getting a view and idea of what else lies out there in terms of work, occupations, lifestyles and places to visit and invest his mobility in, making pivoting to a new type of work or lifestyle feel more possible and realistic, seeing other people doing it making him feel like "I can do that."
His success in the field, as well as his experiences at Ghoomakad, began to help Vivek shape and plan for his future. He was set to complete this internship over the summer, lasting a total of three months, after which he plans on returning to Delhi to work for 3 years while developing his skills and building a client base. Working for this digital marketing company was Vivek’s first experience working remotely, presenting him with the promise that in the future he could start to travel and pull in money wherever he went, something that his interactions with the other diverse populations at Ghoomakad made feel possible. Vivek chose this new digital marketing “profile” because he believed it would allow him to move into remote work and give him the opportunity to pursue the mobile lifestyle it promised, while also presenting him with creative challenges and interesting work he would be happy to spend long hours performing. To achieve this end, Vivek would reenroll in the digital marketing course he dropped out of upon returning to Delhi, both to fill his knowledge gaps as well as to make local contacts in the industry. While doing so, he will also continue working for the digital marketing company at Ghoomakad remotely, taking the
320 work it provides while attempting to spin out his own clients for the future. Beyond this source of contracts and clients, Vivek is also looking into opportunities and postings on Facebook,
Google Plus and Instagram where companies post requests for lead generation, essentially opportunities for freelancers to pitch how they could market the company, with the possibility of leading to future work and obtaining the company as a client moving forward. The goal would be to then start his own company and work completely remotely, travelling around India and beyond living a globally mobile lifestyle.
To begin to carve out the different contours of mobility that define and make sense of the
Transitioner and Bootcamper population, it is necessary to understand how their time at
Ghoomakad fit into their broader constellations of mobility, what purpose and role their time in
Dharamsala played for them, and how this makes bigger push and pull factors of mobility to and from offbeat locations more legible. In Shubham’s case, Ghoomakad served as launching pad for global mobility, a time to prepare himself and practice being mobile before connecting to circuits of global brain circulation and talented expatriate status. At the same time, it also allowed him the time to establish a firmer anchor in India, a social network to rely on in the future to bolster his mobility abroad and later return to. For Vivek, his retreat to Ghoomakad allowed him to
“change his profile”, leave the life he was living behind to relocate and obtain different skills and do what he could not do before. His transition was not to global mobility and brain circulation, at least not directly, but instead was a creative class transformation attempting to become a remote worker, or at the very least a case of switching between creative class industries. His case spoke to a new type of job hopping or mechanism by which job mobility is made possible, merged with a strand of life-cycle migration taking him back towards his family and beyond. These cases present transitionary bouts of mobility employed in the pursuit of liminal time and spaces
321 allowing these individuals to reflect on their lives and future trajectories, providing them with an extended retreat between transitions in their career paths and profiles, and between various other subject positions in the digital nomad typology.
From the Firm to Remote Work: Remote Employees and Contractors
The Bootcampers and Transitioners move beyond the ephemeral, floating, and fluid mobility of the Offbeat Backpackers, rooting themselves inbetween place, flowing through more firmly established routes of mobility with sharper contours and direction. They turn the liminal moments of flight characteristic of global nomadism into a waypoint between stops on their journeys to switch directions on career, mobility, and life chance interchanges and expressways.
Their jaunts to Ghoomakad are moments spent dwelling at the crossroads, picking up news and information at the traveler’s inn to ‘suss out where they should go next, expanding their networks and their view of the overall geographic distribution of life chances, brushing up against the possibility of digital nomadhood. The Transitioners and Bootcampers form a transitionary membrane between the Global Nomads on one end of the spectrum and the populations beyond them, a plane on which transitions between these positions can be made. They maintain their connection to other geographic clusters of established mobility and dwelling, to the city, the firm, and the type of life and work available there, but come to occupy this transitionary area in- between their movements to and from other cities and jobs. The more time they spend in this area, the more they are subjected to the pull of digital nomadhood and the alternate life possibilities it offers, coming to dabble in the concept of remote work and life at the crossroads.
This rooting of life at the crossroads requires a break with the connections to employment and place that has characterized the roads they have taken in the past. It requires a remoting of the
322 job that allows the place of work and residence to fade away and become the domain of the worker, a differentially united or segmented space determined by the wants and needs of the individual subjectivity. This subjectively organized space must allow these individuals to become simultaneously capable of mobility and action anywhere, while also allowing them to anchor themselves at the crossroads, to stay in the place in-between places, even if the location of the crossroads shifts. The next population on the gradient of digital nomadhood is that of
Remote Worker and Contractor. The Remote Worker is able to separate the job from the firm, to make it remote, and thereby enter into a position where they can choose where to live and the set-up of their lifeworlds. Without the boundaries and infrastructure of the firm, and its model of work-life, the remote workers have to provide their own spaces and infrastructures to support their labor and reproduce themselves, finding their ability to do so shaped both by their resources and starting point, as well as by the places they choose to inhabit. The way this population navigates and learns from this tension between balancing the necessities of work and labor versus that of life and lifestyle satisfaction, will reveal the different paths people can take across the subject-positions of digital nomadhood, becoming changed by the experience.
Remoting the Job: From Job-Hopping to Place-Hopping
The first case of the Remote Worker population I will present is that of Gabby, an early to mid-thirties woman from Guatemala City who transitioned from traditional firm work, leaving a job at an NGO to work for a Publishing Firm as a remote salaried employee. Gabby had originally gone to school for Food Engineering, working in the field for three years after graduation, but found the work rather dissatisfying. She explained that while she had made good money, she was miserable in the job and the congestion of Guatemala City, plagued by the
323 mismatch between her passions and the work she was doing day in and day out. She required a job that engaged her passions enough to make the work aspect bearable. She explained that she had made her career decisions without really thinking about their end results and choose this path without having a strong direction or destination in mind. Gabby was a junior member of the creative class who was beginning to feel the alienation and meaninglessness associated with what David Graeber (2017) would refer to as the “bullshit” aspects of this type of work. This dissatisfaction pushed her to take some time to reflect and figure out what she was passionate about before embarking on a new direction and career path. Gabby came to the revelation that she had been looking for a way to focus on the social and on helping people in a more direct way, a hallmark of Graeber’s dissatisfied Bullshit Job worker. In pursuit of this desire, she engaged in brain circulation and enrolled in a Masters’ Program in Sustainable Development in
Guatemala City which led her to both a 9-month school trip to Spain, and an internship, and later a job, at an NGO in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She moved to both these locations with her husband Jairo, the CEO of a Remote Distributed Tech Company, and to a series of other places around
Guatemala and Brazil working on development projects with various organizations.
Though her passion was supported by the work, she experienced different clashes in fit with this job as well. Gabby was becoming frustrated with the boundaries of the workday and the imbalance between the amount of time she had to spend at the office versus the amount of work she actually had to perform. She explained how, of the 40 hours of her work week she had to spend at the office, she regularly had less than 25 hours of actual work to do, spending a substantial amount of the work week screwing around just because she had to be there, followed by hours lost each day commuting back and forth between work and home. Gabby remarked that she had a fair amount of friends and colleagues who shared similar sentiments. These growing
324 resentments speak to a general dissatisfaction with the outdated metrics of productivity kept alive in the contemporary workplace and its hold over maintaining a sharp division between
“productive” and recreational time. Gabby felt that the waste lumped into her “productive” time was running a perpetual deficit while trapping her in place. This pushed forward a desire for a new type of work ethic and organization for Gabby, a desiring and valorization of the productive use of time against its wasting, the demand for an alternative framework for estimating value, or at the very least calling certain elements of the relations of production, like the working day, and the spatial boundaries and requirements of the office, into question. Gabby sought work that she could perform relatively autonomously, not being responsible for organizing and negotiating the work of others, as well as choosing when, where, and how she performed the work. She ended up finding this labor arrangement in the form of a remote job working for an Educational
Textbook Publishing Company based out of Guatemala. She explained that the book publisher is a traditional firm in Guatemala that was converting its workforce from in-office to remote, keeping the stable salaries and responsibility for arranging work and projects, while putting the onus of organizing labor and the completion of these projects on the workers themselves. Gabby worked on writing and editing children’s’ textbooks and coming up with study guides and exercise questions. Gabby stated confidently that she would not lose that desire to help people and that this remote job allowed her to follow this desire while also giving her the freedom and flexibility to figure out how to be happy.
Gabby has been working remotely for this publisher for about two years and used the flexibility of the job to pursue this notion of happiness and meaning through travel. Her travel before becoming a remote worker was more of the touristic variety, taking vacations or traveling for work, the ends and destinations of her mobility determined by tastes of leisure or the
325 requirements of her job. One of the things she came to enjoy most about traveling was seeing different cultures and value-systems, exploring different ways of life. These initial travel experiences were a catalyst for her critically looking at her life in Guatemala City before becoming a remote worker, beginning to question the creative class cultural systems and life practices she found herself caught in. Reflecting on the vague motives that had drawn her to becoming a food engineer, largely the money, job stability, and the comfortable lifestyle it could provide, Gabby commented that she had thought pursuing external goals would have been the answer to happiness, but her experience in these respectable technician jobs made her quickly learn that even when she made money she was unhappy. This has led to her turning inward, trying to figure out how to be happy through an exploration of the self, which had drawn her to
Buddhism and other cultural systems and practices that aimed inwards. Since entering remote work, Gabby used her travels to search for the right lifestyle balanced against her concerns with sustainable development, seeking to live closer to nature, to know where her food is grown, and participate in her local ecosystem and community thoughtfully and intentionally, her mobility coming to overlap with global nomad pursuits of experience and self. She connects her ability to shift her priorities in her career and mobility pathways to the freedoms remote work has brought with it: the freedom to travel, to make her own schedule, to control the boundaries she sets between her personal and work time, to choose her location of work and residence in accordance with these other concerns, all of which come to aid in her continuing cultivation of the self.
Gabby and Jairo originally came to Dharamsala following a desire for new experiences and to push the boundaries of their comfort zone, having traveled here last year for six months where they stayed in Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj proper, coming to hear the Dalai Lama talk and study Buddhism while they both worked remotely. During this original trip, she found it
326 hard to adapt to being in a new place, focusing mainly on the negatives of their stay before returning to Guatemala. On this next trip, which is where I met Gabby and Jairo, Gabby had originally wanted to stay in Dharamsala or McLeod Ganj; however, Jairo had found Ghoomakad online and sold her on this place, arguing that it would allow them to be closer to nature, in a less crowded and touristy location, giving them a bit more autonomy over their time and a more unique experience of the place. Gabby explained that she has enjoyed her time at Ghoomakad so far, that its location in the mountains and general set-up allowed her a much more relaxed and conducive environment to work from than the hostels in McLeod Ganj had. The location and environment held a recharging effect for her while the set-up of the co-living space allowed her to experiment with different patterns of work and recreational activity, eroding the harsh separation between work and leisure she had experienced in her past jobs with their spatial boundaries of work and home. Gabby described how she could work from her room, or up on the balcony outside it, with the mountains and all types of street life whizzing by in the background, and then go outside and run into people, have some casual chit chat and be social, oscillating between spaces, sociality and work at her leisure. This fluidity in regard to her life activity freed up time to fit in bouts of meditation and Buddhist practice, as well as motorcycle rides around the area with Jairo in-between work and socialization. She explained that the co-working space acted as a good site for working and socializing, that it was nice to be around other people who are working quietly, just being in a productive space made it easier to work as well as meet other interesting people, making feelings of dislocation and isolation easier to manage.
The ability to make work an activity that could be picked up and put down when she wanted, mixed with the ability to interact with others and have the space to experiment with
327 different patterns of work and leisure, offered a simpler form of life for Gabby. She found she was more in touch with herself and what she wanted, while at the same time was living closer to nature, eating food and drinking water taken directly from the surrounding area, furthering her beliefs in sustainability through the life she was living, while attempting to find balance.
Ghoomakad and remote work allowed her to strive for these ends, giving her the space to approach her work and pursuit of happiness on her own terms; she did not, however, think that everyone could necessarily do what she was doing, that her remote work for the book publisher was fairly intensive and that it did require a lot of discipline and focus to stay on top of it. She contrasted her own approach towards work and leisure with those approaches she saw other
Ghoomakad residents taking, explaining that she had observed other self-professed “digital nomads” kind of just lazing about the space, not really doing much work, acting more like they were on vacation. She just could not believe that these backpackers were working enough to make this lifestyle possible and sustainable in the long-term. For Gabby, there was a stark contrast in the realism of their different approaches, ultimately seeing the backpackers and other less disciplined “remote workers” as a group separate from her and Jairo even though they often both called themselves by the moniker of “remote workers” or “digital nomads”. These pretenders made her time at Ghoomakad and similar places fun and exciting, but she could not fully understand them or relate to them on the same level.
Though they had originally planned to stay at Ghoomakad for two to three months, Jairo and Gabby left abruptly after two weeks to go on a roaming multi-day motorcycle trip to southern India, allowing for the spontaneity and flexibility of their experiences on the road to determine where they would stay day to day. Gabby, as someone who was able to remote their
328 job, was able to always be on the move, roaming around while her connection to employment remained stable and anchored. Her path to remote work revealed that job hopping could be employed as a tool in the pursuit of personal fulfilment and growth, constituting flights from alienation in the search of fit in lifestyle, passion and happiness in already formed career paths and their attendant work-life arrangements in the city. Remote work allowed her to carry this pursuit of fit and happiness forward by moving beyond the career path, giving her more control over minimizing the portion of her life that employment took up while also taking this surplus time and flexibility to search for fulfilment both within and outside of her work by hopping around place to place and tasting life in different locales. Remote work allowed Gabby to rid herself of the boundaries of the firm and the office, including its physical segregation from other types of activity, as well as its regimented and structured time blocking off and segmenting her life into rigid and isolated units of labor and consumption. The remote work lifestyle allowed her to experiment with structures of life that were more geared towards her own assigned ends, while also demanding that she take on more responsibility for organizing her own labor activity. This tension between flexibility and discipline takes on different forms, and becomes navigable, in the way that remote workers like Gabby are able to anchor and localize their life activity in different locations while traveling, providing themselves with the spatial and social infrastructures that make their labor possible while also maximizing their free time and autonomy. This anchoring can be understood as the localizing of labor and social reproduction, the process of uniting the acts, practices, and infrastructures of production and consumption in the general domain of the lifeworld. Mobility here becomes the way that remote workers experience and experiment with different localized configurations of work and life in the places they travel to, working to build the life possibilities present in different locations around the work they bring with them.
329 Back to Nature: Creative Class Exodus and Ex-Urban Mobilities
The next case of the remote worker who brings their job with them is that of Rolli, a mid- thirties woman and Non-Resident Indian (NRI) IT Worker who grew up in a small rural Indian village. She went to work for western multi-nationals and lived abroad for a few years until she had a child and used remote work to return back to India and provide her son a simpler life. Rolli grew up considering herself a “village person”, talking about how “there was always so much work to do, but that everyone was under one roof…there was also less inequality back in those days, the gap between rich and poor was smaller, you had more contact with those around you.”
She connected to this hard-working and communal atmosphere and took its values forward in her life. Her mother had broken with the village life to go to school in the city and became a chemical engineer, with Rolli’s grandmother effectively raising her. Rolli connected her mother’s experience to the beginning of a deeper shift happening in Indian society as the nature of the family and traditional gender roles in India were being challenged and strained with the further inclusion of women in the work force coupled up with the movement of populations from the village to the city.
Following her mother’s example, Rolli moved to the city for her education and went to an
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and became a software engineer working for western and
Israeli tech firms that carried her into a creative class career engaging in global brain circulation and talented expatriate mobility. She started out in big Indian cities like Mumbai and Pune, then jumped abroad to live in Thailand, Malaysia and London. Rolli explained that her global mobility had originally been prompted by the image and desire of the city she had developed when living in the village that she had filled with broad and high flying expectations of the lives
330 that it could offer in terms of culture, entertainment and happiness. As she approached new city after new city, her expectations were dashed, finding herself lonely and isolated in crowded and hectic streets, deeply unhappy even in the magical city of London. While Rolli enjoyed the work, she hated the western materialistic lifestyle she was living, the ends of material gain and consumption mixed with the alienation and isolation of city life which she associated with the
Western city as a broader construct. Rolli explained that she had been content with city life briefly in her youth when she had friends and tight knit social circles in college and during the first years of her working life that made living in the city worthwhile. When she initially landed in London, she enjoyed it for the different opportunities it presented in contrast to India, describing the freedom she felt from not having the whole village and community in her business, enjoying the freedom and individualism she could experiment with in the western city.
She coupled these benefits of individual freedom with the increased access she had to new and varied styles of consumption. She originally loved having the city as her backdrop, her whole work and social life contained in the small geographic space of a few blocks, her colleagues forming the basis for her social group which carried on its activities both within and outside of the office, a cast of characters with whom she could make the city her playground.
This was not to last, as Rolli identified two dynamics that worked to unmoor her and change her experience of the city for the worse: the fracturing of her friend groups as her peers coupled up and married, branching off onto different life trajectories; and, the increasing grind and burnout she was facing at the office that consumed all her free time causing her to question the sustainability of her career trajectory. She explained that all her friends, even though they were going down similar career and professional paths, detached themselves from their friends,
331 and in some instances the city of London, once they became mothers in order to be close to their families for help. Rolli commented that seeing her friends make these decisions made her realize that if she settled down and had a child she would want to move back to India, to the village atmosphere she was raised in, not the isolating city of London that she believed was ill-suited to the purpose. She took the fading away of her social ties hard, having invested a lot of emotions and energy in these friendships that were now gone. She thought this taught her a lesson, that she needed to learn to be slightly detached in her relationships, appreciating them for what they were while not relying on them so tightly. Without her social network to anchor her, Rolli was left with her office life where she began to quickly burn out. She had loved, and still does love, IT work and coding, but the fracturing of her friend group threw her work-life out of equilibrium, removing the social aspect from her work and home life, leaving only the emptiness and loneliness of the city in the spaces outside of the office with the lack luster material and individualistic comforts it offered. Work could not be the center and core of her whole existence, her discontent rising day by day.
Rolli’s growing discontent with the city and her expatriate life abroad led her to return to
India, living in both Mumbai and Pune working as a software engineer for AT&T. She explained her move back was guided by contradictory desires which spoke to the broader experience of other Non-Resident Indians like herself. Rolli explained that NRI’s go and live abroad then come back to India with different tastes and desires for life but have a hard time merging the expectations and values of the west with Indian cultural values and the social worlds they return to. They return to Indian cities looking for middle class consumption enclaves mirroring the global “cosmopolitan” consumption infrastructures they experienced abroad (Shatkin), these
332 middle-class enclaves increasingly sprouting in Indian cities around the country. In Rolli’s case, she was looking to escape the construct of the western city and its vestiges of material comfort, consumption and urban isolation; however, due to the spatial monopolies and restrictions on where she could continue to find employment in the IT sector, she was dragged back to Indian cities which looked even more like the western cities she was trying to escape than they had before she left. Life in Pune and then Mumbai was largely the same as the life she had just left in
London, leaving her just as unhappy. During this time, she started taking weekend trips outside of Pune, to the beautiful beaches and nature spots lying scattered around its periphery. She explained that these trips made her feel refreshed and revitalized, ready to return to the city and carry through the daily grind for the promise of relief and escape the next weekend. Rolli took her explorations of nature to the next level, travelling to Dharamsala ten years back where she explained she finally felt at home and refreshed living in the mountains closer to the land, staying at a homestay that farmed its own food and had the vestiges of a village community amidst an international tourist presence. Dharamsala offered her the village culture she sorely missed from her childhood while also allowing her to retain a connection to the international populations she had enjoyed while living abroad, all while furthering her pursuit of living closer to nature and the land. After this trip, Rolli decided that if she continued working for western firms and getting paid accordingly, she would save up for a few years in order to move to
Dharamsala, the dream being to start a café & homestay there while unplugging and being free in the mountains.
This trajectory and dream, however, did not come to fruition according to timeline she put forth. During the four years she had budgeted for saving up in preparation for the move, Rolli
333 married a fellow NRI in a loosely arranged marriage. They had a son together and both continued working full-time for AT&T. She continued working at the office, but slowly began transitioning to working remotely doing the same job so she could be home with her son, while her husband was working full-time at the office. Her and her husband eventually separated, leaving her alone in Pune with her son. A newly single mother, Rolli did not have the support system in Pune to have her child looked after while she worked and keep her full-time job for
AT&T. She had to let the job go but transitioned into remote work over the past four to five years, performing contract work from home for AT&T and former clients while raising her son.
Though her life cycle stage change had put off her plans of moving to Dharamsala, she kept the dream alive and made the jump four months ago, settling in at Ghoomakad. Bolstered by remote work and a decent savings, she was now able to maintain herself in the rural setting indefinitely.
She had considered moving to Bangalore instead, as it had a big and emerging remote work scene but ultimately thought she could not deal with the size and congestion, the city being one of the primary things she was attempting to escape. Rolli has been very happy with her choice, enjoying her life in Dharamsala and the Himachal Pradesh region in general, being in a place where she could see the mountains and escape the heat in southern India, as well as the crowdedness and over-congestion of the mega-cities she had called home for the past decade
Rolli was drawn to Ghoomakad by its beautiful location in the mountains, but also by the vibrant and supportive community she found there, having been at Ghoomakad for four months and planning on staying longer. Ghoomakad provided her a life amongst a built-in community of remote workers and backpackers, an outpost that could support her continued remote work while also exposing her to other remote workers with kids who populated the co-living space, giving
334 her social supports for raising her child. Ghoomakad connected her to similar others, offering her up the solid social relationships and community she had been looking for. This remote worker community at Ghoomakad also exposed her to different forms and visions of ex-urban communities that these similar others in Ghoomakad and the surrounding area were engaged in that would provide her with different avenues for life possibility that she would seek to pursue further down the line. Rolli sought to find a community where she could live according to different values and have deep and embedded relationships she could not find in the cities she spent her youth in, considering long-term options ranging from hippie communes, to eco villages and community farms, to the co-living space of Ghoomakad, using remote work to make these connections to alternative communities possible. She explained that people pursuing these lifestyles at Ghoomakad are part of a greater movement happening all over India of people returning to the rural and village areas, of youth leaving the city and lives abroad, for a simpler life in the country, either returning to village cultures of their youth or experiencing them for the first time.
Rolli is similar to Gabby in that she pivoted from a creative class job to remote work to pursue personal lifestyle ends and happiness according to different metrics than those of the world she left behind; however, whereas Gabby was job-hopping at the beginning of her career and approached remote work towards the beginning of her stints of mobility, Rolli approached it half-way through or towards the end of her creative class career, remote work a tool she could use to transition in life stage towards motherhood and a desire for anchoring after years spent in global circulation. Furthermore, while Gabby’s mobility was put in motion according to more personal and individual lifestyle ends, Rolli’s was prompted by a desire for community and
335 collective engagement. Rolli also demonstrates what happens to transitioners who enter global circuits of mobility when they return from their time abroad. Rolli and returning NRI’s sought not to necessarily continue globe hopping but instead to pursue methods of rooting oneself in places formerly beyond their reach. The creative class exodus and ex-urban mobilities that
Rolli’s case represents reveal how individuals can transition out of circuits of global circulation using remote work to escape from the city and firm in search of their alternatives. These alternatives present themselves as a foil to the urban and creative class lives they lived, the negation of their rigid, isolated, and material pursuits turned into a positive search for community and internal happiness. In this instance, remote work allows for an untethering from the city and the life it offers.
Rolli’s case serves to show how the gradient of digital nomadhood that I have been sketching thus far can close its own circuit, capping the movement from the global nomad to remote worker with Rolli acting as an edge case. The global nomad pursues alternative values and lifestyles in radical opposition to the mainstream and looks at the remote worker as a model for grabbing onto income and employment from elsewhere to bolster these pursuits. In contrast, the remote worker is a creative class professional pursuing alternative values and lifestyles they see modeled by global nomads through the tool of remote work, transitioning slightly from the firm-employment structures they have called home by using the extension and digitization of these occupational structures as a means to this end. While they occupy the same place, their relationships to travel and employment are inverse to one another, with each side trying to learn from the other. In this context, remote work is a tool, not an end in itself, allowing for the possibility of balancing and minimizing the influence of work over one’s life while increasing
336 their freedom and control over their free time, leisure, and life pursuits, this possibility being expanded to a larger swath of the global population. The goal is not to be changed by remote work or fully adapt to its forms and logics, but to adapt remote work to your own logic, creating a relative limit on the pursuits put forward. Global nomads up to firm-employed remote workers constitute an open yet bracketed circuit of individuals seeking to boost and broaden their own life prospects by integrating into already existing models of life found elsewhere only accessible now that they have fled from or broken with the global city’s spatial monopoly on employment.
They do not necessarily contest existing socio-spatial structures and divisions of labor; they instead aim their mobility towards areas where there is flexibility and a lack of structure to set up their own individualized relations of production and consumption.
From Remote Worker to Distributed Company and Beyond
Are there positions beyond the remote worker who uses remote work to choose what place works best for them? Or is this horizon a frontier for new and expanded figures and divisions of labor yet to be explored? What lies on this frontier? The last group of digital nomads
I will be describing are those for whom remote work is an end in itself: those who call themselves digital nomads, from contractors and solopreneurs, up to the completely remote and distributed firm. These individuals identify strongly with the figure of the digital nomad and see themselves as a part of a movement that embraces the different organizational forms that remote work presents, using their location independence to explore bases for creating new structures of production while also using it to construct new life worlds and ways of living. They do not simply flee structure, but instead seek to contest and reshape its. In this section, I will present cases of a remote work proselytizer attempting to strike out on his own with the aim of one day
337 running his own distributed company; a solopreneur who spun out his initial individual remote work contracts into a three-person sub-contracting company with childhood friends, who eventually came to run Ghoomakad and then broke away on his own to start a co-living space aimed at incubating future tech workers; and a CEO of a distributed company from Guatemala who demonstrates the perks of running a remote company from both the perspectives of the corporation and the workers, occupying both spaces simultaneously.
Seeking a Remote Community: Remote Work as a Way of Life
The first case of this more self-aware digital nomad population I will be presenting is that of Abishek, a software developer in his early-thirties from the industrial city of Jameshedpur near Kolkata, who went to school in Delhi, worked creative class jobs at big tech firms, and found himself discontent with the work-life it offered, deciding to pursue other passions, remote work being one of them. Abishek was motivated by similar flights from alienation as the remote workers described above, enjoying the stability of the firm-employed remote worker but also saw the growing necessity to leave behind this stabile position to embrace the free flow of life as a remote contractor, one who not only has to perform the work they are given, but has to find it.
This entails developing one’s own clients and servicing even more ends of the labor process than ever before, while also managing the work of localizing and anchoring one’s life activity. This step beyond remote work as a means to an end in itself is what constitutes this subject position as different from, and an expansion on, the position of the remote workers chronicled above. It is a move from remote work as a tool to prop up individual lifestyle to remote work as a precondition for the pursuit and construction of new communities and productive-consumptive forms. It is the awareness of their broader position in remote work as a growing sector of employment, as digital
338 nomads, that allows them to see the possibilities beyond the horizon of remote work, providing them with visions of the directions and organizational forms that can develop within it.
Abishek grew up in the deindustrializing planned town of Jameshedpur, enjoying a self- described sheltered and protected childhood. Abishek had originally wanted to follow the stabile life path propagated by most parents and children of his generation of attending an Indian
Institute of Technology (IIT), even going so far as to attend a year-long exam prep academy on his own in “big and hectic” Delhi, but ultimately did not receive admission. Abishek ended up majoring in Computer Science at a private college in Bhubaneswar in Eastern India from 2006 to
2010, a time he put into context with the rise and popularization of the internet and social networking platforms in India. The world wide web exposed Abishek to a plethora of information and life possibilities, finding himself drawn towards productivity-related and self- help blogs, in addition to coding tutorials and resources. These blogs gave him valuable knowledge “which they [didn’t] teach in college”, giving him a better understanding of the context he was operating in. Bhubaneswar presented him with few local opportunities and he did not find the ones that existed to be creatively challenging or offer him the ability to grow. From what he read online, it seemed like if you went to college in Bangalore, you could go to a myriad of tech meetups happening all over the city with its vibrant and active tech community. After graduation, Abishek sought this community and inspiration in the form of jobs at a series of big tech companies in Pune. His first job at Infosys RTS, an 8000 employee firm, provided interesting challenges but he quickly realized he did not want to be a cog in a giant machine, and hopped to a job at Amdocs, a small to medium Israeli firm with many international subsidiaries.
Working at Amdocs, Abishek was exposed to a plethora of motivated and knowledgeable co- workers, working on interesting projects while being supervised and mentored by senior staff,
339 growing his skills and making a real paycheck. Abishek took advantage of the various social events and opportunities present in the bustling city of Pune, playing on the company football team, hopping around tech and startup meet-ups around the city, and going on weekend getaways with the friends he met at work.
Three years later, Abishek found himself in a good city with a vibrant social life but he also began to feel stymied and stagnant in his job. Abishek was looking to make a change, causing him to investigate what he was truly passionate about, and putting him in a position to jump when he found the opportunity. During his three years in the city, Abishek became heavily invested in his company football team and fell in love with the game. He wanted to give himself fully over to it, imagining a job where he could train young kids in the sport that also gave him enough flexibility to pursue his own coding side-projects. He got a job at an organization that ran football centers around India who was looking for someone to set up a center in Pune. With the job in hand, Abishek decided to quit his job at Amdocs and take a six-month sabbatical from his tech career with the condition that “if I'm not able to make the football thing work, I have to go back to a regular job”. In hindsight, he did not know what he was getting himself into, the job a far-cry from what he had envisioned, mainly sales with no coaching. During this time, Abishek took advantage of his self-defined and flexible workday to learn new technology related skills.
He wanted to make a personal website and surfed the internet for resources and tutorials on how to build one, enrolling in a course that taught him how to create a website using the Ruby on
Rails syntax and infrastructure. Abishek described this course as a turning point for him, the course and the supportive community he found underlying it helping him expand his skillset and complete a finished website.
340 Even though Abishek had not made much progress on his football inspired career path, his experience making a website with Ruby on Rails peaked his interest, unlocking some of his pent up and dormant enthusiasm for coding. This pushed him to consider pursuing a “regular job” in this sector, carrying him to a series of Ruby related meet-ups around Pune put on by the
George Software Company, “a Ruby on Rails shop” that hosts a lot of Ruby community related conferences around India. Abishek spoke to the company’s co-founders at one of these meet-ups and sent them his personal website as a resume. The co-founders were impressed he had built it on his own and offered him an internship to test him out. At the end of his first month, he joined the company as a full employee with a good salary. According to Abishek, “this [was] where the remote journey started. Before, [working] was a game of survival, but now…I'd taken a six- month sabbatical and come out on the other side with a job. That whet my appetite for risk.”
With his “coding mojo” returned, Abishek settled into his role at George Software in earnest, finding challenging work and a supportive and motivating atmosphere. The company would regularly bring in outside speakers to talk about technical advances and the new possibilities they opened like remote work and distributed companies. Through these talks, Abishek was exposed to the work and philosophy of David Heinemeier Hansson, the CEO of the remote company Base
Camp and an espouser of remote work as a business model and lifestyle. Hansson advocated for small companies that worked remotely, keeping them hungry and focused on the act of innovation. In his book Remote: Office Not Required (Fried & Hansson 2013), Hansson argued that small remote companies would be more creative places, with the remote situation of their workers allowing each worker to set up their own work lives outside of the life-sapping office, changing their relation to their work, and ultimately making them more innovative and productive.
341 Abishek was further exposed to remote workers who lived this philosophy when collaborating on a work project with a team of remote workers out of Singapore. They had a different attitude towards work than that found in the traditional firm, spurning the restrictions on their time and movement, and the very atmosphere of the office which they saw as actively blocking and restricting creativity and innovation. For Abishek, one of the key benefits of working remotely is the time that it frees up for creating and developing side projects. Working remotely removes the constraints of the working day and the surveillance of the office on how workers can spend their time, opening up room for learning, side-projects, and boosted productivity. Working more efficiently opens up pockets of lost free time which can be used to work on one’s self or learn something new. You can use these pockets of free time to develop new and different sets of skills that help you maintain yourself as a remote worker while also expanding the services that the companies themselves offer. Like Gabby, the initial representative of remote workers described above, Abishek believes that remote work could be utilized to cut down on the amount of time the firm controls your life, opening up more free time; however, while Gabby thought this new free time should be put towards the ends of developing yourself and finding happiness, Abishek believes that it can also be used and reintegrated into production in a way that pushes both the worker and the firm forward. For
Abishek, the requirement of remote work that you become responsible for arranging and administering your own labor process, the ends of production that used to be managed by the corporation and in the office by separate functionaries, gives you a power that beforehand was inconceivable. If you do not like your hours, or where you are working, you can change and experiment with different working patterns, find different office space, or even change the location you are living in search of a better fit. Sacrificing the structure set up by others for
342 reproducing your life and labor process is a gamble that not all would be able to make, but the rewards and control over the shape your life takes are valuable, novel and bursting with possibility.
As he moved closer to the horizon of remote work, he began to ask himself what his priorities in life were, recognizing that he had been away from his parents for ten years and he was missing out on vital time with them. After two years at George Software, Abishek was feeling a bit burnt out and the mix of push and pull factors that had been driving him towards remote work won out, inspiring him to quit his job to embark upon another six-month sabbatical.
He moved back home with his parents in Jamshedpur to start out his experience as remote freelancer on Upwork – a global remote contracting platform. He created a profile and applied for different project postings, writing proposals to the clients which was completely new to him.
At Amdocs and George Software he had not needed to worry about obtaining clients, there was a whole sales team for that. After a few months, he managed to get one short-term contract that he finished very quickly. He was well compensated his time compared to how much he made per hour at his regular job, but there was a vast difference in the number of hours the contract took versus how many hours he would have worked at a 40-hour a week job, the contract not providing him enough to live on. With the contract finished, he was back to being unemployed and searching for new contracts on Upwork, realizing he would have to stockpile savings to live on between contracts in the future. While attempting to eke out an existence on Upwork,
Abishek read more about different remote companies for inspiration, coming across Big Binary where many of his remote work role models already worked. He followed many of them on twitter and saw they were able to travel and work at the same time. Growing more frustrated with freelancing, Abishek reasoned that it might make more sense for him to pursue a remote job than
343 it would to remain a remote freelancer, with a company to obtain clients for him he worked wherever he wanted. He decided to pursue this route and applied for a remote job at Big Binary, working a probationary month of employment which led to a job offer.
Abishek was very enthused by this proposition but came across another opportunity that filled him with excitement and challenged his commitment to joining Big Binary: attending a coding camp put on by the organizers of Hill Hacks at Ghoomakad in Dharamsala. Abishek had been following the Hill Hacks event -- a pre-eminent remote working conference -- and its organizers for years, finding them inspiring and at the center of carving out the future of remote work in India. At the same time Abishek was going through the Big Binary recruitment process, he came across a tweet that the organizers of Hill Hacks would be hosting a one month coding camp where they were teaching new skills like React Native, offering a networking space to meet influential people in the field and potentially start new projects and ventures with them. He spoke to Big Binary about delaying his start at the company to attend the coding camp, pitching them on the skills he would learn and the connections he would make there that could be beneficial to the company in the long run. They agreed. With his job at Big Binary in hand and waiting for him, Abishek took off to the mountains and embarked on his first visit to
Ghoomakad, an experience that would forever change him and expose him to a world he knew existed beforehand but could not quite break into. When he set out on the Digital Nomad lifestyle path, he had a visual of being on his laptop in the mountains, lost in nature, wanting to find a sharp contrast to his life working in Indian cities which he described as “concrete jungles.”
He found this in Dharamsala, with all of its Buddhist and Hindu spiritual sites and attendant
Ashrams sparking an interest in exploring the spiritual side of his life. The camp’s real benefit for Abishek was the like-minded individuals he met there who made him re-evaluate his own life
344 decisions and career path from a different perspective, expanding his conception of what was possible in terms of the remote work lifestyle. The contractors, solopreneurs, and people running distributed companies he met there, all of whom were working while globe hopping, exposed him to digital nomadhood as a culture.
After returning from his month at Ghoomakad revitalized and filled with new purpose,
Abishek emailed Big Binary to find out when he would start working only to find that the job offer had been rescinded. Big Binary had lost a large client and they were struggling to provide work for their current employees, let alone bring in new ones like Abishek. He was surprised but took it in stride, realizing that this job would have fallen through even if he had not gone to
Ghoomakad. Motivated by the stories of peers he had met at Ghoomakad who created their own remote work streams, he proactively contacted a former client of his from his days at George
Software asking if they needed a Ruby developer. It paid off and they offered him a job working remotely and Abishek started his digital nomad career in earnest. “Once I started working with them, obviously it was a challenge for me that I had to create a [good work] environment, I had to build good habits. I was trying to make sure that I don't slack because it might be very easy for somebody to slack off working from home.” To create this safe and productive work environment, Abishek moved back to Jameshedpur with his parents, staying in place for 6 months to build discipline. After 6 months at home, he began to take opportunities to travel as they arose: first a two week trip to Rajasthan for a wedding and then, emboldened by the finding that he was able stay consistently productive during this trip and taken by the digital nomad popularization of Thailand as a remote work hub, a two-month trip to Thailand, spending one month in Chiang Mai and the another enjoying island life in Ko Lanta. Abishek carried this remote work and travel lifestyle forward for two years, finding them to be some of the best of his
345 life, staying at his “homebase” with his parents for a good portion of the year and taking extended travels every few months before returning back home.
The type of mobility that remote work offered Abishek was central to his pursuit of the lifestyle and his futures within it. He was continually intrigued and fascinated by the prospect of being able to move someplace new every two months, trying out new places for fit within his continued exploration of self. He believed each new place you visit gives you a new frame of reference for locating yourself in the world, allowing you “to step away from your everyday life and be a different person for a while,” an essential condition for figuring out how to pivot yourself to new opportunities and experiences. Dharamsala was the one constant location that he kept returning to for two months every summer in-between his circuits of mobility. When I met
Abishek at Ghoomakad, this was his third trip in two years to the co-living space, coming this time to participate in the One-Month Campus event put on by his friends, exposing himself to new technologies and coding techniques, and meeting other young remote workers from around
India. Ghoomakad has become his second home, a place that he understands and has a connection to that helps him find his connection to digital nomadhood again and again. He believed that places like Ghoomakad create physical spaces that encourage people to live and work in harmony with each other and their surroundings, balancing work with nature and socialization in distinction to the environment of big tech start-ups in the city where life is rushed and regimented. Abishek argued that flexible and balanced spaces like Ghoomakad, and their attendant communities, create the room for people to figure out the things they love, allowing them to get lost and spontaneously turned on to new experiences, changing the futures you can pursue and making you aware that you can keep pivoting the direction your life takes.
346 Now a part of this growing digital nomad community, he wanted to start taking responsibility for shaping it in his own way. To this end, Abishek began forming a virtual community of Indian remote workers called Remote Indian, sending weekly newsletters covering the state of remote work in India, listing events and meet-ups happening in different cities, publishing interviews with members about their remote work journeys and posting work opportunities. Abishek started the community to encourage people to believe that being a remote worker in India was possible, attempting to reach young people grinding away at their jobs in the city who felt they had no other option. His goal was to “demystify the process.” In addition to wanting to proselytize the remote work path, Abishek also started Remote Indian to create a personal community keyed into the unique problems and issues common to the region, wanting to create a network of support for meeting both social and technical challenges related to the lifestyle. The community was still in its nascent stages of formation when I met Abishek, but, at the time it was thirty members strong and interacting on a regular daily and weekly basis.
Abhishek hopes that he can continue to grow the community, wanting to create more cohesion amongst its members by hosting work vacation meet-ups around India where all the members can converge in place and form stronger bonds.
Abishek thoroughly believes that remote work is the future, that “most people are going to be working remotely in ten to twenty years”. While he boasts that it enables workers to find meaning and community outside the rigid form of the corporate urban office, he also thinks remote work is starting to present itself to different actors as a commonsense solution to external conditions facing the world. He argues that cities will soon start embracing remote work, giving the example of how young people are migrating from their hometowns for the jobs clustered in big Indian cities. He notes how these population increases are putting pressure on the whole
347 infrastructure of the city, with basic service provision becoming difficult to provide to the increasing millions of citizens clustered in space because of the spatial monopoly of employment constraining people there. He believes that remote work can alleviate this pressure by allowing people to live anywhere and de-concentrate which could also be used by remote workers to energize the economies of their hometowns. He explains that remote work allowed him to return to his deindustrialized hometown of Jameshedpur that had been hit hard by job and population losses over the years, bringing in an income of higher conversion rate Singapore dollars with him that he spends in the local economy. He argues that these locational choices in aggregate could lead to real differences in local urban economies, drawing the worker, as opposed to the corporation, back to their hometowns and potentially change the fate of the town as a whole. He argues this de-concentration will also happen because cities in their current form are becoming unsustainable for workers and businesses themselves, citing rents around the globe from San
Francisco to Mumbai. While these cities might be appealing in their own right, there are other places that offer their own uniqueness and forms of consumption that are more affordable and could become sights of residence and mobility if workers could break from the spatial monopolies that cities like London and Silicon Valley have over their attendant industries.
He thinks these benefits and possibilities also emerge not just for cities and workers, but for corporations and firms themselves. The economic advantages of remote work for the firm do not stop at lowering office space costs but also in the global labor pool that it makes accessible to them. He believes that, in the long-run, companies are going to realize that remote work simply makes more economic sense than retaining the traditional legacy of the large corporate firm and office space. He thinks that large companies and firms are going to find it tough to make such a large shift and that smaller firms will ultimately transition to this new mode of work quicker,
348 becoming more competitive and setting the standard model for what successful firms will look like in the future. He envisions a future where small niche remote firms working on very specific problems are the norm, collaborating with each other, breaking apart and creating new firms as individual workers meet new people through these collaborations and spin out new projects and businesses. Abishek believes the opportunities and potentials of remote work could have the ability to reshape production on a macro-level, changing the way workers and firms interact globally, as well as the scale of their interactions. As a result of this prognostication, he wants to position himself to space this space by creating distributed companies and collaborative ventures while at the same time living a life that is meaningful in itself, the two being interrelated for him.
In this subject position, remote work ceases to solely be a means put in service of different lifestyle and consumption ends, becoming an end in itself, a terrain of employment and work-life to be explored where the ends of production and consumption cannot be separated but are internally bound up with one another. Instead of merely wanting to attach themselves to different already existing infrastructures of production and consumption, they want to experiment with creating and erecting new spaces and infrastructures of work and life. This bent is exemplified by
Abishek’s pursuit of, and attempts to create, community as well as by the potential he sees lying in the remote firm as a new scaling organizational structure and basis from which different permutations of this structure can be formed and plugged into various locales.
Solopreneurs and Scaling to the Distributed Company
Abishek is a proselytizer of remote work, seeing the large potential lying in how remote work can be applied and configured in the future, with the distributed firm as the promise and ideal of this whole movement. However, Abishek’s enthusiasm for the distributed firm is based
349 largely on its potential, a place within one being the aim of his pursuits that he has not quite reached yet. What are the mechanisms by which distributed companies can be formed, what different shapes can they take, and what obstacles and challenges lie in the way of achieving this ideal form? I will briefly present the cases of Suraj and Jairo, the former showing how one can go from being a remote contractor to the head of a distributed firm, and the later demonstrating how the CEO of a traditional firm can transition it to a distributed company. These cases will tease out the different concerns and desires that shape this movement in subject position, carrying my analysis and construction of Ghoomakad’s place-based typology to its completion at the capital end of the spectrum.
Suraj, a mid-twenties Indian computer engineer, was one of the former managers of
Ghoomakad who had started remote contracting as a solopreneur out of college and scaled up his contracts to a three-person sub-contracting company with his childhood friends Ankit and
Prashant. These three ran Ghoomakad during my stay, splitting their time managing the space and hosting events while also working on contracts for their firm. They would eventually leave
Ghoomakad to set up their own co-living space down the road geared towards training and teaching young Indian college grads how to code and contract. In his youth, Suraj went to boarding school in the State of Himachal Pradesh in the mountain ranges close by to Dharamsala where he met Ankit and Prashant. He described his time at boarding school as idyllic, providing him with a close-knit community and a beautiful environment to learn and grown in. After graduating from boarding school, Suraj followed the example of everyone else he knew and went to college at a Mobile Institute of Technology & Science near Bangalore, spending three years there pursuing a Bachelors’ in Computer Engineering. Suraj quickly became disillusioned by his college experience, seeing it as simply showing up to take exams and not learning any actual
350 skills he could use in the real world, a critique of the Indian Higher Education system I heard from most of my respondents who had been through it. To get over the feeling that he was just passing time, he began learning coding online and circulating around Bangalore meet ups, eventually picking up enough skills that he started working on actual paid coding projects. While he ended up finishing his degree, he spent more time freelancing than anything else and left school with regular contracts. His friends Ankit and Prashant had gone to other colleges and felt similarly let down and disillusioned by their educations and job prospects. They saw what Suraj was doing and provided him the social support he needed to pursue the life of a solopreneur or
“an entrepreneur who runs a company of one”. He eventually built up enough contracts that he started having more work than he could do on his own and reached out to Ankit and Prashant, offering to teach them the skills required to work on these contracts with him, starting a three- person contracting business that has only grown since then. They work for Western clients and earn money in dollars, euros, Thai baht and other higher exchange-rate currencies compared to the Indian rupee.
As they got their contracting firm off the ground, they reminisced about their childhood together in the mountains, dreaming of being back in the Himalayas and being close to nature again. They had been working out of each other’s cramped apartments, feeling lonely and isolated in the city and spending high rents to stay in Bangalore, worrying about the balance of their operating costs versus their incomes. Even with incomes remunerated in higher value currencies, they felt that they needed time to situate themselves in the contracting space and grow the business. Every bit of savings would help. They came to the realization that “we are remote workers, we can do this from anywhere. So we decided to ship out to Dharamshala,” where there rent would go from roughly $500 UDS to $100 USD a month, increasing their
351 runway and ability to sustain themselves in the long-term. Around this time Prashant and Ankit visited Ghoomakad, attending a Hill Hacks event put on by Ayush Ghai. They met Ayush and
Mohinder and found out that Ayush was leaving to start his own alternative community focused on building family values and pursuing spiritual harmony and that Mohinder was looking for other digital nomads to run the space. Suraj, Ankit and Prashant talked with Mohinder and decided to take over running Ghoomakad, wanting the community of their boarding school days as well as to tap into the digital nomad community already forming there. While Ghoomakad had hosted Digital Nomad events previous to them taking over its management, they described how, in-between these events, it acted as more of a nature retreat where people stuck to themselves.
They wanted to take the ephemeral community that these events created and extend it in time and place. They argued that plenty of digital nomads came to Dharamsala to get away from the city and be in nature but upon arriving found themselves lonely in a new place and in need of a space to work from. While the co-working space would get people to Ghoomakad, it was their job to tap into their need for community by crafting one outside of their door.
They began marketing Ghoomakad in this fashion and achieved a fair amount of success, obtaining a high number of residents who began staying longer, making long term friendships and social networks that drew them to return again at different parts of the year, even causing some to move to Dharamsala for good. They remarked on the amazing friendships they made building this community as well as the creative cross-pollination of ideas that emerged out of all these tech workers and contractors working next to one another, learning new skills and teaching each other how to be successful digital nomads. They felt they were “creating an environment where you can experiment [on yourself and the different life trajectories you can take], having a laboratory of different projects in our coworking space [that reveal different] road maps for how
352 to follow your dreams.” Many business ventures were spun out of this community and Suraj,
Abishek and Prashant saw they were assembling a critical mass of people engaging in remote work in India and globally. They saw how the concept of the Digital Nomad was strong globally but weak in India and decided to take part in shaping it, hosting an event called Remote Explorer that drew people from all over India as well as from the West that continued to be a source of residents for years to come. All the while they built this community, they were continuing to operate their remote contracting firm, their brushes with the other digital nomads comprising this community helping them build and grow their business both through the expertise they provided as well as by operating as a labor pool they could train and draw from. They began to see that they could aid others in teaching them the skills to work on and obtain their own contracts and clients. They saw a hunger among young Indians like themselves who had gone to college in hopes of attaining successful careers but who felt like they were let down by the system, learning nothing and finding themselves none the better off for it. According to Ankit “the data shows that something like 80% of young college graduates in India are under or unemployed.” Suraj,
Ankit and Prashant were all drawn to remote work and contracting coming from this same position, leaving college without the skills to obtain satisfactory employment and reacted by teaching themselves to gain work and incomes online.
Having come out the other side, they felt that they could try to help others find their way and address the educational problems they saw ravaging their friends and generation. This is where the idea of Alt-Campus, their next venture that caused them to break away from
Ghoomakad, came from. Alt-Campus was conceived of as an alternative to college, the type of program they wished they had been able to attend to gear themselves up for the real world of work and contracting. Alt-Campus would provide a six-month Full Stack Software Development
353 residential training program fusing guided learning via available online courses with the support of a place-based community. Attending the program would cost nothing upfront with students merely responsible for their room and board, spending a fraction of what they would spend if they were staying in cities while enjoying the beautiful environment of Dharamsala. They would take in new cohorts of students every month, guiding them through different curated online courses teaching various aspects of software development and providing a community space to learn from one another and work on their own projects. Students would produce a portfolio of work while working on actual contracts at the same time. Each new student cohort could learn from the ones that had been there longer, providing everyone a continuum of experience to draw from. At the end of the six-month program, Suraj, Prashant and Ankit would help their students attempt to gain jobs in the tech sector. If they successfully gained employment making over
50,000 INR, then they would pay Alt-Campus ten percent of their salary for 18 months. The goal was essentially to provide people an avenue to make stabile and guided transitions into the tech sector and digital nomadhood proper. Suraj, Ankit and Prashant had made the transition themselves and realized they could provide this service for others, growing the digital nomad community in India and providing a labor force for the tech firms in India and abroad. In Suraj,
Ankit and Prashant’s case, the movement from solopreneur to remote sub-contracting firm and beyond was a bottom up move that ended with the recognition that the move towards digital nomadhood could give people more freedom to experiment and find their place in the working world, producing community and innovation that had a value in itself that they could create and shape.
For others, the move towards digital nomadhood and the distributed firm can come from the top down, with a company deciding to go remote for a variety of reasons motivated by firm
354 benefits and instituting remote lives on their already-existing place-based workforces. This is the case with Jairo, Remote Worker Gabby’s husband mentioned above, who was the CEO of a firm in Guatemala City who decided to transition the company over to remote work. While one of the draws for Jairo was the individual ability for him to live the digital nomad lifestyle, he was also motivated by the firm benefits he thought it could offer. Getting rid of the overhead costs of maintaining an office space alone provided a large motivation for the move, Jairo commenting that “you don’t know how much money you spend providing water, coffee, electricity, and office space”. He argued that getting rid of the office space would save him money, allowing him to spend more on labor costs while also allowing his workers to break with the space of the office and the commutes that plagued them in the city. He characterized Guatemala City as a dangerous place, citing the instance of one of his workers that was mugged on his commute to the office, arguing that remote work could help people avoid these types of dangers. This transition to remote work required the introduction of a new way to manage and organize his employees, leading him to schedule a daily morning meeting where his workers outlined what they were going to be doing over slack, capped off with a meeting at the end of the day where they reported what they had completed with how they spent their time in-between the meetings up to them. He found this structure really effective, actually increasing productivity because “people were not in the office, forced to be there to fulfill time requirements, dicking around and doing stuff that is not productive”.
Remote work actually made it so people worked when they wanted to. The work was more focused and the end of day check in worked to build shame for those workers who did not do anything, revealing to all how much each other’s work relied on everyone else, not being
355 productive actively hurting and stalling other workers on the project. He explained that almost all of his workers loved working remotely, gaining the ability to choose when they work, not having to commute, and organizing work around other activities in their lives. Remote work, however, did not appeal to everyone, with two of his employees not able to handle it, saying they felt really bad letting everyone else down but they simply could not be productive from home and they eventually quit. Jairo’s decision to make his firm remote was done for both firm benefits as well as from his personal desire to live a digital nomad lifestyle. This eventually carried him and his wife Gabby to Ghoomakad and Dharamsala for unique life experiences and to explore their spirituality close to nature, emulating global nomad lifestyles with a secure connection to roaming employment. Jairo applauded remote work for allowing him to live a life not fragmented between different fields and activities, providing him the freedom to organize his life according to his own design and schedule. He felt that this type of lifestyle preserves a certain form of natural flow, being able to shift from one activity to another. Work became an activity he could take up and put down, no longer acting as the sole focus of his life that everything else was sacrificed to.
Those who embrace remote work as a way of life have a broader awareness of digital nomadhood as a global sector of employment that they are trying to attach themselves to and shape. They have a growing consciousness of how remote workers as a class fit into broader sectors of production and social reproduction and the role they could play in creating different futures over and against the traditional firm and forms of spatially locked, structured and determined work. They aim to change both production and consumption, the links and separation between the two being actively experimented with and flattened in the worlds they construct,
356 seeing different collective futures as possible. Their movements to Ghoomakad reveal how
Dharamsala, through the residence and settlement of these populations, is being pulled into global pipelines of production for different purposes, some of these actors creating spaces and communities to pull people around them into digital nomadhood and connect to global production with western pay, with others rejecting both the space of the city, and the firm and life structures that go along with it, in the hopes of finding and creating its alternatives. Both impact Dharamsala and the other places they will flow to, creating cross pollination and spill- over effects, drawing both aspirants and those who would never have dreamed of entering the field of remote work into their wake. The benefits of a firm mindset may have pushed Jairo to take his company in this direction, but as a laboring subjectivity himself, when separated from the perspective of the firm, he became enamored with the type of self he could become in different places and the life world he could set up in its pursuit.
While this move towards remote work was purposeful and agentic for Jairo, for his employees it was induced from the top down, pushing them into remote work and digital nomadhood, forcing them to find their own way in this space and experiment with what worked for them. While most of his employees were happy with the switch, each experimenting with the agency it provided them, others could not hack this new state of affairs and were pushed back out onto the labor market to find more traditional forms of employment. This is a state of affairs that will become more prevalent as other firms decide they can reduce overhead costs and increase productivity, like Abishek proselytized above, bringing totally different kinds of people into the sway of digital nomadhood and its corresponding logics of urban prospecting, following established paths while also producing new ones. There will be whole new populations of grinners and groaners entering the fray, the particular conditions of their entrance into remote
357 work constraining the initial urban prospecting logics they can bring to bear. This will cause them to search for models to follow in this anomic and normless space like those congealing in the figure of the digital nomad produced by those who take up its moniker and speak in its name, this core of self-aware and self-identified digital nomads for whom this way of life was a choice.
The Gradient of Digital Nomadhood
What can be seen as uniting these fragmented populations, bringing these diverse subject positions together into this typology? As I argued in the Network Chapter, a minority of digital nomads who are actively engaged in shaping this lifestyle act as an influential core amongst a diffuse scattering of proximate and adjacent populations being pushed and pulled into the periphery of remote work. Spaces like Ghoomakad bring these populations into collision, each population impacted and changed by their exposure to similar others, altering the urban prospecting logics they will come to employ in the future, sparking movement in both directions along the typology, creating a traversable and fluid gradient of digital nomadhood between them.
From one end of the typology, you have global nomads who seek to stay in their circles of liminality while continuing to engage in hyper-mobile forms of place consumption, using remote work to sustain themselves by jumping to digital nomad circuits; on the other end of the spectrum, you have solopreneurs and remote firms who are already connected to remote work for their livelihood who seek out the backpacker circuits for their alternative lifestyle offerings to break with what they have already experienced. Their relationships to self and employment are inverse, with each side trying to learn from one another, their movements between these ideal types creating an unknown number of hybrid subject positions. Moving across the typology from the global nomad to the distributed company end of the digital nomad spectrum, a rising self-
358 consciousness of digital nomadhood begins to emerge alongside the purposeful re-appropriation of fixed capital, each progressive subject position coming to employ the moniker to refer to themselves and connect their mobility to already existing representations of the digital nomad they encountered in the world. This identification with the figure and its stricter definition becomes more salient moving across the gradient, becoming a contestable identify used to distinguish oneself from the vague field of mobile populations laying claim to the term as well as to explain the need for discipline in urban prospecting metrics and practices, sparking a reckoning with the realities of enduring and continuing on this mobile lifestyle path. In Los
Angeles, digital nomadhood was seen in its nascent and unconscious forms, preceding identification with a broader cultural figure and movement. The digital nomad was forced to contest with the other urban figures of the global city, Los Angeles’ social form blocking and offering other routes to its distinction as a unique figure. In Dharamsala, far away from conflicting influence and given space to interact on its specific terms, the digital nomad as a figure is given room to be identified with and performed, becoming differentially represented and contested by the diversity of actors laying claim to its moniker.
Urban Prospecting in Off-Beat Geographies
What do these people have in common that makes Dharamsala a site of mobility and habitation across these different cases? I argue that Dharamsala fulfilled a variety of ends for each population given how it, as an offbeat locale, fit into their simultaneously distinct and overlapping urban prospecting logics. The differences between the horizons and limits of possibility seen in the urban prospecting of Los Angeles and Dharamsala is a product of the constraint on mobility that the global city enacted on aspirant urbanites as a monopoly of
359 employment and life possibility. Against the backdrop of those who were not born into the city and its social structure, the need to move to the city and attach to it for the chance of better life outcomes appears compulsory; choice among possible metrics guiding one’s urban prospecting limited by need to be in the city itself. In Dharmasala, the city has been engaged and abandoned to consider other socio-spatial formations due to the dissatisfaction these mobile populations felt with the offerings of the city. This abandonment and consideration of “Offbeat” locales has been further made possible by the decoupling of employment from spaces of monopoly, carried through by either remote employment, liminal trips taken away from work, or through the acceptance of temporary jobs of the global nomad variety. As an offbeat location, when put into the calculations of urban prospecting, Dharamsala was evaluated on its potential to give comparative advantage to each subject’s ability to actualize their desires to escape the city, with its choked sites of social reproduction, unhappy jobs, social isolation, limited scope of options, inordinate prices, and other obstacles it put in the way of their being able to survive and successfully reproduce themselves.
The notion of “the offbeat” takes its initial definition as the negative of the cities these individuals had called home. It is against this lack that digital nomads pursue places that provide the social reproductive infrastructures and space to allow for the pursuit of alternative lifestyles and values, providing the backdrop to support the search for liminality and a mainstreaming of fringe life experiences. The “Offbeat” becomes defined fluidly as any location that allows this to happen. This is the lens through which these populations view Dharamsala as “Offbeat”, what they see in it depending on how the place connects to their economic, cultural, social, psychological, and lifestyle needs and aspirations. When put into positive terms in concrete
360 urban prospecting calculations, the “Offbeat” in Dharamsala that is pursued becomes the character baked into the place, a certain cultural uniqueness marking a difference with the rigid structured lifeworlds configured by westernization and the summits of capitalism. The neo- colonial image of Dharamsala burns bright, maintained since colonization and its establishment as a hill station, buoyed and expanded by the movement of Tibetan Exiles to its hills and the spiritual infrastructures and enclaves it brought with it. This physical and cultural infrastructure found in Dharamsala actualizes the search for alternative life worlds and forms of social reproduction so fervently pursued by digital nomads. This bundle of goods is found actualized and embodied in the different living arrangements, philosophies, spiritualities and cultural practices of the pilgrimage enclaves populating the mountain region. The form of these enclaves, with their communal living and experimentations in life organization, is made possible by
Dharamsala’s rural and far off location which provides relatively cheap and plentiful land to construct new internally facing lifeworlds on. The “Offbeat” that they seek is a space for community construction and a place to learn skills and reflect on their trajectories while also having more control over their personal lives, a space with less structure that they can build upon.
The circuit of mobility carrying digital nomads to Offbeat Cities like Dharamsala shows the start of a departure from the urban prospecting orientations of past mobile figures that guided the development and continuation of the urbanization processes let loose by the emergence of the global city in the 1990s. This circuit of mobility presents a potential spatial fix to the dynamics underlying the new urban crisis, at least in that it leaves behind the global city to start its processes anew in dissimilar locations. In Offbeat Cities, unlike in Global Cities where they
361 could connect to the city’s superstructures but not alter its base, digital nomads are able to build and shape their own structures of production and consumption, contesting and altering the base of these Offbeat Cities, bringing forward new forms of organization and settlement. In the creation of literal communities sprinkling the mountain side, there is a literal search for autonomy and creativity in setting up spaces of social reproduction built around not strictly profit and productivity but also around values of happiness, community and spirituality with production being but one of many concerns. They can take advantage of Dharamsala’s much lower costs of living and social reproduction while connecting to higher level employment elsewhere, earning incomes in the form of currencies with higher exchange rates. This movement to Dharamsala can be viewed as an agent level hacking and rerouting of the global system, digital nomads who are figuring out how to have their cake and eat it too. This speaks to the potential of workers to use the digitization and unbundling of the global system of production to their advantage while building spaces simultaneously within and outside of it. Uneven development remains a factor of globalized urban political economy under the emergence of labor mobility but takes on a new role in reproducing the overall regime of accumulation. Instead of being strictly the direct dumping ground for new investments of capital and a source of cheap labor for lower ends of global production chains, they have also become spaces for the reproduction of producer services labor unbundled, sites for the consumption of privileged global workforces alongside urban escapees attempting to find an outside to the worlds they know. The question is whether they have truly found an outside to the spaces of the Global City or whether they are merely bringing the urban crisis with them and starting it anew elsewhere.
362
The Repercussions of Labor Mobility
363 Conclusion
The Trajectories of Lives in Circulation
The last two chapters revealed that those engaging in the circuit of mobility to global cities like Los Angeles attached themselves to the global city in new ways but had to adapt themselves to its superstructure as opposed to altering its base; whereas, those engaging in the circuit of mobility away from the global city to offbeat cities like Dharamsala landed there to make their own life worlds and social reproductive infrastructures, seeking spaces outside of existing structures to make their own and alter the base of the outlying area. These ethnographic case studies helped flesh out the urban prospecting calculations underlying these two circuits of mobility set loose by the new urban crisis and how digital nomads are making themselves while engaging in these acts of flight. They demonstrate the manner in which this population responds to the situation of the new urban crisis, finding themselves cast into precarious circumstances amidst changes in place and work at a global scale and left to make do any way they can, with mobility being one of the only options left available to them. Even with movement to the global city continuing, it is clear that the places and spaces of the old world, and their social reproductive infrastructures and lives they make possible, are limited in their ability to meet the task of reproducing this labor force, and hence the regime of flexible accumulation itself. This pushes them to find and create new forms of shelter and refuge to meet the conditions of the new world, either within the shell of the old or far off the map on “wide-open” land. In this conclusion, I will tease out and reflect on the implications of urban prospecting at multiple scales, looking specifically at (1) the nature of the spatial “fix” to the new urban crisis that urban prospecting produces from the subjective standpoint of labor; (2) what urban prospecting viewed from the objective standpoint of production reveals about the fate of place and production under
364 the regime of flexible accumulation, and (3) what insights these findings provide for unpacking the contemporary conditions that these spatial fixes are confronting, specifically how they are impacted by the mass expansion of remote work to the general population in the wake of the corona virus pandemic and its corresponding potential for location-independence.
The ‘Fixes’ of Urban Prospecting: Searching for Refuge from the Crisis
What exactly is meant by the notion of labor mobility producing a fix to the new urban crisis? What does the fix look like in practice, in both Los Angeles and Dharamsala, and in general? How does urban prospecting reveal the nature of this fix from the standpoint and subjectivity of labor? In Los Angeles, digital nomads accommodated themselves to the city’s established forms of life and social structure, instead of creating the social structure itself, or at least did so in a secondary manner. They transposed themselves onto the city, on its complexifying super-structure, as opposed to altering its base. The PodShare connected these populations to Los Angeles, supporting the mobilities underlying its global city processes, taking in the labor mobility set loose by the new urban crisis, and keeping it circulating. This co-living space allowed the global city to continue and intensify by making space for these new figures as opposed to allowing the global city to be shaped by them. These digital nomads use Los Angeles primarily as a site of consumption and circulation, using the PodShare to find out where to circulate next, like boarders at an old western inn looking for news of a gold rush.
They attach to the global city in the ways that it allows, connecting in new ways compared to past Angelenos but with limited abilities to actively contest the established links between consumption and production baked into the city itself. This limits the range of digital
365 nomads that will ultimately land here to those not necessarily looking for a radical departure from existing urban conditions and livelihoods, just for a space of their own within them. There is a split in the PodShare population between those who find success and fulfilment upon landing in Los Angeles and commit to longer-term mobility investments by transitioning into the city, assembling the required bundle of goods to achieve and maintain tenancy; and, those who approach it at a distance, taken by its uniqueness but also by the experience of mobility itself, being able to try on new locations and identify the different life possibilities they hold, driving them to engage in further mobility, Los Angeles serving as one of many potential investments in an ever diversifying portfolio of places. This circuit of mobility directed at the global city is made up of digital nomads who are attempting to become mobile to see what this mobility and location opens up and offers them, performing a flurry of test runs before committing to the extended mobility of digital nomadhood, their own self-awareness of digital nomadhood and its highest peaks of life possibility growing as they engage in more bouts of mobility to other global cities and beyond them.
In Dharamsala, its off-the-map location, lower costs of living, natural and under- developed landscapes, and low barriers to entry allowed digital nomads to take and claim space for new purposes not fitting into the already existing trajectories of the socio-spatial formation.
The precondition for being in Dharamsala meant that nomads moving here either had to have already sacrificed work-lives and employment reminiscent of the global city or that they had to fully bring their work with them remotely. These locational and population-based conditions allowed for new forms of settlement in this location not possible in the global city, expanding the field of future life possibilities that can constitute the gradient of digital nomadhood. The digital
366 nomad populations coalescing at Ghoomakad demonstrate a more self-conscious development of digital nomadhood, with the openings in the Dharamsala urban structure allowing for new configurations between production and consumption to be made. This drew a more matured swath of digital nomads to the site for longer term settlement, providing a wider range of digital nomad figures influencing movement along the spectrum, showing nascent digital nomads the heights of possibility lying in the lifestyle. In Dharmasala, the city had been engaged and abandoned to consider other socio-spatial formations due to the dissatisfaction these mobile populations felt with the offerings of the city.
As an offbeat location, when put into the calculations of urban prospecting, Dharamsala was evaluated according to its potential to give comparative advantage to each subject’s ability to actualize their desires to escape the city, with its choked sites of social reproduction, unhappy jobs, social isolation, limited scope of options, inordinate prices, and other obstacles it put in the way of their being able to survive and successfully reproduce themselves. In the creation of intentional communities sprinkling the mountain side, there was a literal search for autonomy and creativity in setting up spaces of social reproduction built around not strictly profit and productivity but also around values of happiness, community and spirituality with production being but one of many concerns. This circuit of mobility presents a potential spatial fix to the dynamics underlying the new urban crisis, at least in that it leaves behind the global city to start its processes anew in dissimilar locations. In Offbeat Cities, unlike in Global Cities where they could connect to the city’s superstructures but not alter its base, digital nomads are able to build and shape their own structures of production and consumption, contesting and altering the base of these Offbeat Cities, bringing forward new forms of organization and settlement. This speaks
367 to the potential of workers to use the digitization and unbundling of the global system of production to their advantage while building spaces simultaneously within and outside of it.
What do these findings reveal about urban prospecting as a source of spatial fixes to the new urban crisis when taken at a level of generality and from the standpoint of labor? The underlying processes observed in these urban prospecting circuits of mobility, to the global city and to offbeat cities, are reminiscent of the description that Paolo Virno (2007) gives of the
“dialectic of Dread-Refuge” in The Grammar of the Multitude. Virno describes the dialectic of
Dread-Refuge as the general and universal struggle that humans wage against the existential nature of existence, where existential dread against death and the struggle for survival pushes people to build particular forms of refuge in order to survive. This dialectic becomes historicized when the nature of the dread driving refuge construction is approached as historically contingent, the refuges being built responding to historically experienced conditions of dread, providing shelter against its specific forms of danger. These refuges then are places and spaces constructed during particular historical epochs, responding to different dangers and needs, leading to the agglomeration of multiple refuges overlapping in different locations, each addressing a particular assemblage of dreads and dealing with them differently. The construction of new refuges is set into motion when a new form of dread and precarity emerges that existing refuges cannot confront directly, driving flight from past forms of refuge in search of a different type of refuge which addresses these new forms of experienced dread; either to already existing refuges which meet individual needs better or to topoi koinoi or common places where new refuges are constructed to address their shared dread. Virno defines common places as those new locations produced by those fleeing past forms of refuge where needs arising in response to shared
368 conditions of dread become common-ed and new refuges can be built, common places constituting the space and field of co-construction brought into being by concrete actors in particular locations.
Virno was writing about the emergence of the multitude, the same subject that Hardt &
Negri (2017) were discussing underlying the reappropriation of fixed capital mentioned in the
Revisiting the Urban Question Chapter, the multitude understood as the large inchoate mass of individuals thrown into precarity by the move away from industrial capitalism towards deindustrialization and the regime of flexible accumulation. Virno writes about experiences of precarity amongst the multitude and how these experiences condition the responses that the multitude produces to these situations with a specific focus on the role that space, place and mobility play in these processes from the level of general and abstract theory. However, this general grammar can be applied to understand historically particular forms of precarity and the concrete responses the multitude produces to them, like that of the new urban crisis and urban prospecting. The digital nomads in my study can be understood as a concrete example of the multitude defined negatively coalescing into different types of positive subjects and collective actors, reacting to the particular experiences of precarity they face in the life world, specifically the new urban crisis, and reacting to them in new and concrete ways through the totality of their urban prospecting practices. The new urban crisis is the historically contingent form of dread faced by the multitude, the refuges of the global city built in the last round of economic restructuring responding to its own particular form of dread, which has altered its form due to changes in place and production which is pushing the multitude out of this old refuge by making it harder to hold onto and less capable of accommodating those not already under its protection.
369 This push factor, along with the multitude’s reappropriation of fixed capital through the digitization of labor and its corresponding potential for location independence, has led to a new round of flight from the multitude attempting to either (1) attach to existing refuges that can accommodate them, as in the global city, or (2) to locations that provide fertile and open grounds for the production of common spaces and new refuges up to the historically particular task of sheltering them from the crisis, as in offbeat cities.
The spatial “fixes” constituted by the flight and new refuge construction put into motion by the new urban crisis function as such by calling the efficacy of existing refuges into question.
Urban prospecting shows how the historically inherited socio-spatial formations and specific geographies approached by digital nomads under the new urban crisis influence the directions this flight from existing refuges takes along with shape of the new refuges they construct. The circuits of mobility evidenced by the collection of urban prospecting practices described throughout this dissertation demonstrate contemporary flights from dread, and the tension felt within existing socio-spatial formations being able to adequately shelter and reproduce their attendant populations, driving flight to common places within already existing socio-spatial formations offering differential levels of protection against new forms of dread, or at least the space to construct new protections. The case of Los Angeles and the PodShare reveals digital nomad attempts to repurpose existing refuges, adding to them in a way that continues the global city while attempting to build increased protections against experiences of the new urban crisis, acting as common places with a bracketed field of agency in terms of how much the refuges can be repurposed. The flight that takes these digital nomads to existing refuges like Los Angeles
370 gives them the experience of engaging in flight to new forms of refuge than where they came from.
When this flight is engaged in more frequently, it reveals the inadequacies and short- comings of these existing forms of refuges and induces further comparisons between existing refuges to find a comparative advantage between them. The case of Dharamsala and Ghoomakad shows the abandonment of existing forms of refuge for spaces of relative under-development and freedom from structure that allows for the construction of new refuges from the foundation up.
These sites may exist at the geographic margins of contemporary capital accumulation processes but can be approached anew depending on how much freedom and agency they allow digital nomads to reshape their lives and construct new refuges along different lines, their actions building new refuges which draw others in flight and potentially bring these locations into the center. The cases investigated in this dissertation show but two strands of urban prospecting let loose in response to the crisis. Continuing research on the different destinations of flight and the different strands of movement captured in the social network model would reveal even more variation in how this particular historical dialectic of dread-refuge is playing out, and the shape it will take in the future.
The Fate of Place and Production Under the Regime of Flexible Accumulation
Who can act to create new refuges? How has this been shaped by different epochs of production? And how have digital nomads been put into a position to do so this time around?
What does their mobility reveal about the changing nature of labor and its mobile effects on the spatialized regime of flexible accumulation? The preceding exegesis on digital nomadhood covered throughout this dissertation has made the case that the level at which the spatialized
371 relations of production underlying the flexible regime of accumulation is organized has shifted over the past few decades. The level at which this organization is administered impacts the resulting space and what possibilities for life and production are present in different locales. The epochal move from industrial capitalism to the flexible regime of accumulation dominant under post-industrial capitalism has transferred the responsibility for the organization of these terms and their stability from the collective actors of the firm, multi-national corporations and the state, more and more onto individual workers and urban inhabitants. When these historical configurations of the labor process were managed more heavily by the firm, their reproduction and articulation led to a more standardized assortment of socio-spatial formations, as in the fordist city. The switch to flexible accumulation and post-industrial production has led to a diversity of socio-spatial formations organized by smaller flexible firms and finance capital, creating the global city formation and its variants down the hierarchy of urban networks of production experienced up until now. With the latest wave of restructuring of the global production process underlying the new urban crisis -- the movement towards increasing temporary and individual contracting coupled with the digitization of labor -- the responsibility for organizing the labor process, and connecting to various social infrastructures to support it, has fallen on the individual digitized remote workers – digital nomads -- themselves. The worker now organizes a large swath of the relations of production themselves (Hardt & Negri 2017).
They are left to manage more ends of the labor process than ever before in their own life world, outside the traditional factory or office, making unique connections to the socio-spatial formations they flow to with concerns over both their own individual production and consumption, creating a host of variegated and ever changing socio-spatial forms on top of each other. This is co-occurring alongside the spatial co-presence of different sectors of production in
372 the same locales whose production processes are still being organized by small flexible firms along the model and form of the global city, as well as with other sectors of industrial production still managed by traditional firms and multinational corporations reproducing spatial relations of production reminiscent of the fordist city. The socio-spatial formation in the era of flexible accumulation then is the sum of all of these scales of production, their spatial relations of production, and the infrastructures of social reproduction that these scales of production utilize simultaneously and differentially.
The labor process, and the scale at which it is organized and administered, has undergone vast changes with the move to the regime of flexible accumulation, creating different units of production, requiring different inputs and infrastructures, and requiring different cultural schemas for their reproduction at various scales and by different actors. Richard Llyod (2002) argued that flexible accumulation demands a plurality of cultural forms to connect workers to the diversity of levels and scales upon which they can access the labor process, these plural scales evident in the co-presence of industrial, post-industrial, and digital forms of employment and production within the same cities. For Llyod, the creative and social reproductive work of artists in neo-bohemian sections of de-industrialized downtowns worked to create consumption enclaves and conceptions of self that brought these locales and their residents into different globalized relations of production and circulation at various scales. Each scale of production -- and the conditions underlying its reproduction -- is mediated by particular cultural conceptions of self that become concretized in particular populations and locales as they attempt to connect to pluralized locations within the global production process, bracketing what types of outcomes and future life possibilities they can pursue on a personal and geographic level. The manner in which
373 workers are able to connect to the production process, whether through traditional industrial employment within the factory, producer services employment in small flexible firms, or digitized remote employment as individual contractors, both requires and produces different cultural scripts and conceptions of self that make the continuation of these production processes possible, and provide schemas of reproduction that enable the workers, firms, and corporations to connect to particular socio-spatial formation in different ways. The level at which these workers connect to the global production process also impacts the scale at which the relations of their labor process are organized, how much of a role they have in organizing it themselves, and thus the elements of the socio-spatial formation they require for their own labor process.
This scaling down of the laboring subject, and the labor process they fit within, is a continuation of the story of capital and the needs of production organizing the relations of production, and the social reproductive infrastructure used to reproduce it, scaling down through the flexibilization of the economy from the firm to the worker themselves, making it so the needs of consumption and reproduction for the individual worker come to drastically impact those of production, or at least play are larger role in determining where production is sited. When the factory arranged production, they did it on a mass scale, looking for concentrations of labor and resources with large spatial investments in fixed capital, reproducing the worker on an extended and massified scale, wages being the source of reproducing the worker, the content of their consumption largely irrelevant except as a source for the absorption of the fruits of mass production. With the move to post-industrial production, small flexible firms organized themselves around each other in agglomeration economies that allowed access to global infrastructures such as finance capital, expertise, and culture. Locales that contained these
374 infrastructures allowed them equal access to the corporate headquarters and finance capital that gave them their work contracts as well as the talented knowledge labor that they organized beneath them in sub-contracting teams of creative class workers. The consumption needs of these knowledge workers in flexible firms of the global city became both the target market for post- industrial small-batch flexible production as well as the precondition for the very existence of the labor necessary to produce the knowledge, information, symbols and culture underlying these products of postmodern consumption (Harvey 1992). The spaces of production and consumption in the city became more and more interspersed, with the consumption needs of these knowledge workers and the service workers who reproduced them becoming the grounds for the further valorization of capital within neo-bohemian districts (Llyod 2002) bridging the spaces between the office and the residence, between production and social reproduction proper. Thus, the qualitative and substantive needs of the small flexible firms and the knowledge workers they employed came to be important to the continued reproduction of post-industrial labor with socio- spatial formations called upon to meet both the needs of capital and particular sub-sections of labor. It is the split between these needs and their content that makes different socio-spatial formations attractive and host to different ends and sectors of the global production process, with each individual labor process and the scale it is managed at privileging either the needs of capital or labor, of production or consumption in different proportions. The new urban crisis emerges when these different scales of production and their spatial schemas of reproduction enter into conflict and contradiction in the space of a given socio-spatial formation.
This dissertation has looked at is how labor has connected to cities and labor processes in various sectors of production and regimes of accumulation, and how it has been doing so differently in the latest phase of economic restructuring amidst the new urban crisis and the
375 digitization of labor. The city was the site of employment, holding a spatial monopoly over employment and access to production, with different options of success and cultural consumption available depending on the particular location and the ends of global production serviced at this location. Labor went to the city because it had to, to both the fordist and the global city with their formally different monopolies of employment that demanded their presence and left them stuck with the host of negatives associated with this spatial monopoly like unaffordable housing, high costs of living, congestions, pollution, traffic, and constrained consumption and life options only available to the privileged few. This spatial monopoly on employment acted as a constraining barrier on the actions and life possibilities of labor in the past, with the location of employment taking predominance in determining how one could attach to a place. This constraint is still active and operating in the case of the global city and its monopolization of employment, forcing certain conditions of social reproduction and self- actualization on workers, bracketing and limiting the horizons of the future and life possibility they can hope for. They can have a future, but it must be in the city, and the city is a place they can barely scrape by.
With the digitization of labor, the monopoly of employment held by different socio-spatial formations dissolves, if not completely functionally then formally. As labor can be performed from anywhere, then the needs of labor and consumption can then work to drive where labor locates, which will in many instances still be the locations that have held historical monopolies on employment or still do for large sectors of employment, like evidenced in the Digital Nomad
Cities chapter; but, in other instances it may be drawn far away from these locations and their perceived ills to places of difference, informality, authenticity and experimentation. The choice of which locale to invest one’s mobility in is a result of each worker’s connection to
376 employment, the boundaries it draws on the autonomy of the worker itself in terms of their labor process and where they can live, and the conceptions of self that activate certain forms of consumption and life experience as musts in terms of both their labor processes but also in terms of the lives they want to live, the futures they want to pursue, and the lifeworlds they want to inhabit. Place becomes the playground and terrain upon which they pursue the satisfaction of these various logics and needs in proportions speaking to their particular circumstances within the socio-spatial formations they evaluate and come to occupy containing the raw material through which they craft their lives and labor, and ultimately global production itself. Though I have been considering the manifold relations between the three terms of place, self and employment, locational difference provides the most visible change in these relations, whereas the changing relations between the other two terms are inherent and implicit within changes in location. What remote work as one extreme end of our employment axis of population difference allows us to see is what happens when access to employment is held constant across locations, whereas employment in the past has dictated which changes in place and self were possible and achievable. Thus, place can come to act as a value in-itself for various actors, coming to play a greater role in their geographic decision-making than it has in the past, now separable from the past configurations of place, employment and self that used to dominate, allowing for the emergence of new relationships being forged between these three terms and the contestation of existing relationships of production, social reproduction and the forces that structure them.
Cities, Remote Work and Mobility in the Time of Corona Virus
The questions and processes I have been investigating in this dissertation were already poised to grow and become more relevant to the work-lives of millions of workers world-wide, and now
377 with the emergence of the global corona virus pandemic, they are becoming more and more important and central to the machinations of the greater economy as the mass expansion of remote work to the greater population has taken these processes I have been investigating at the edges of the economy and moved them to its centerlxxvii. This mass adoption, triggered by the impacts of the corona virus effectively making co-working in place an existential hazard requiring isolation and immobility from those able to do so, happened quickly with 31 percent of workers in the US who were employed in early March 2020 at the beginning of the outbreak switching to working at home by the first week of Aprillxxviii. This mass adoption has been uneven, however, as only 37 percent of jobs in the US could be performed entirely remotely and at home with 63 percent of jobs requiring significant onsite presencelxxix. This has produced an uneven experience of employment in the economy between those who are able to work remotely and those who are not. While the unemployment rate peaked nationally at the unprecedented level of 14.8% in April 2020 and remains at a still elevated level of 6.7% in Decemberlxxx, with
57.4 million workers filing for unemployment as of August 2020lxxxi, the unemployment rate increased by 14 percentage points in occupations where remote work was not feasible and only 6 percentage points in occupations where it waslxxxii.
Remote work allowed those who were able to perform it be more insulated from the general economic downturn sparked by the corona virus, at least in the context of its immediate outbreak, with 2.6 million of the 2.9 million jobs lost between February and March of 2020 coming from jobs that could not be teleworkedlxxxiii. This protection afforded by remote work may not last however, with signs emerging that the jobs of many white-collar workers, those who were able to shift to remote work, are increasingly at risklxxxiv. While the resilience of
378 remote jobs surviving in this pandemic economy is threatening to wane, transitioning the mass of jobs existing in the economy to remote work is not as feasible as it appears, with the Bureau for
Labor Statistics finding that of the 45% of U.S. employment in which remote work is feasible, only a little more than 10% of these workers spent any time working from home before the pandemic. Of the remaining working population with remote-work feasible jobs not working from home before the pandemic, their remote work take-up rate since the corona virus pandemic has been low at 25 percentlxxxv. While remote work is not up to the task of providing a complete panacea to the unique conditions of the corona virus which has prompted a massive global economic downturn, its expansion will have lasting effects on the world of work moving forward into the pandemic and in the years after it ends. An Upwork survey found that 41.6% of the
American workforce continues to work from home, with an estimated 36.2 million Americans,
22% of the workforce, projected to be continuing to work remotely by 2025, an 85% increase in the number of remote workers prior to the pandemiclxxxvi. Furthermore, a Gartner survey found that 80% of company leaders plan to allow employees to work remotely at least part of the time after the pandemic, with 47% allowing for full-time working from homelxxxvii. The willingness of firms to continue the pandemic-triggered transition to remote work is matched by a reciprocal desire from workers, with a Flexjobs survey finding that 65% of remote employees want to work remotely full-time after the pandemic with another 31% wanting a hybrid remote work situationlxxxviii. The desire to continue working from home is strong enough that 27% of workers say they are willing to take a 10-20% pay cut to do so, with 81% saying they would be more loyal to their employer if they had flexible work optionslxxxix.
379 Why are firms so supportive of the transition to remote work and how are they using this transition to further their own ends? How does the pandemic constitute a moment of opportunity that firms are taking advantage of to restructure themselves in response to the general crises of capital accumulation that preceded but have been exacerbated by the pandemic? In terms of the firm, remote work allows for production and accumulation in some manner to continue amidst quarantine, but also provides an opportunity for firms take advantage of the crisis and further flexibilize by laying off workforces, cutting labor costs, dumping office spaces and their attendant costs, and liquidating whole employment sectors of the company. They can undertake transitions that they would have rolled out incrementally and piece-meal over the course of a decade and do it overnight with the cover of the pandemic washing away any ethical or discursive impediments to their actions. It is just what has to be done for the companies, and the value of their shareholders to survive. The question of who is an essential worker has become a dominant debate in mainstream discourse, with this pandemic showing that low-wage service- sector workers are clearly foundational to the continued reproduction of society. The category and status of the essential worker has rightfully emerged as a rallying cry to question the valuation of certain jobs over others in our society that have been unjustly undervalued and undercompensated. However, this same type of essential worker valuation is being conducted by the firm as they are forced to confront very quickly which parts of their workforce are absolutely necessary for continuing production and which are not, along with which production chains are feasible. This can be seen in the calculus employed by corporations who took massive government bailouts to stay afloat and then laid-off most of their workforces, cutting labor costs while redistributing the stimulus to shareholders and stock buybacks. This pandemic has also been used by firms to cut their aging workers who held bloated salaries, pushing them into
380 retirement to open up room for cheaper and younger workers doing the same jobs for lower wages and benefitsxc. “The number of people over the age of 55 who are participating in the workforce is down by 2 million, compared to pre-pandemic levels.xci”
Firms are also taking advantage of their employees working remotely and choosing to relocate to locations with lower costs of living – one of the powers and benefits of labor mobility and digital nomadhood central to the dynamics of urban prospecting covered in this dissertation
– by challenging the existing wages they already pay these same employees and beginning to rescale them to the employee’s chosen location. These changes have already been put forward by
Facebook, Twitter, VMWare and other Silicon Valley firmsxcii, with Mark Zuckerberg arguing that “If you live in a place where the cost of living is dramatically lower, then salaries do tend to be somewhat lower,xciii” and Twitter cutting their bay area worker salaries by 8% if they choose to move to San Diego and 18% if they move to Denver. Some entrepreneurs and CEOs warn that the pursuit of wage-cuts based on these “geographical differentials” are not worth the cost savings they produce as these cuts will hurt company morale and kill thriving work culturesxciv; however, with such high rates of unemployment and limited options, workers just might not have the choice to contest these salary cuts, which is supported by the survey numbers above that 27% of workers would take a 10-20% pay cut to continue working remotely, and in this context really to continue working at all. While it has been argued that remote work and location independence benefits workers, firms and management in different ways, with geographic differentials being the benefit to firms, the weight and size of these benefits are in tension and conflict, with a benefit for one actor leading to a loss for another.xcv The argument that geographic differentials, paying workers location-based salaries, are how labor markets work in the absence of remote
381 work, which is the case functionally with urban labor markets and even with government employment that adjusts pay for the same positions according to localityxcvi, the rationale for doing so and mechanisms by which this is being pursued has shifted completely in the circumstance of corona virus labor mobility.
While geographic differentials are already practiced on the level of the federal employment, these differentials are at least heavily structured and regulated; however, with tech companies and the private sector, firms can change wages however they see fit, and amidst pandemic fueled unemployment could slash wages with little contestation due to the large reserve army of unemployed workers available to them nationally and globally. Firms are using their own worker’s flight as an opportunity to cut wages and labor costs while also cutting their own office space costs by pushing the responsibility for warehousing their own workers onto the employees themselves. While firms have been rewarded in the past for relocating to areas where the costs of office-space are cheaper, finding comparative advantage and cost savings they can use elsewhere, when workers themselves try to operate like a firm and relocate to cut their own overhead and social-reproductive costs, they are punished with lower salaries while also taking on more costs and risk. The onset of these geographic differentials being applied to the growing remote work labor market reveals the flipside of the increased agency that digital nomads gained by taking on the management of more ends of the labor process, adding new burdens that did not exist before and decreasing their agency. By paying the same workers different wages based on where they live, firms are not only adjusting for the differences in costs of living between global cities and other areas but working to lower wages on the scale of the entire labor market. As labor markets become delocalized, the power of labor mobility is challenged by geographic
382 differentials between wages and consumption, with the benefits of these differentials that were directed towards the ends of labor in the case of digital nomads now being blocked by capital, who instead uses them to lower wages and increase their own access to a global labor market that it can use to undercut high-wage work in formerly competitive urban labor markets.
Why might workers themselves be drawn to remote work for reasons not simply motivated by its intrinsic lifestyle appeal? How does their adoption of remote work fit into their own strategies for surviving the pandemic as well as the global great depression it let loose and the other general crises in capital accumulation exacerbated by it? While the above survey findings may point to a positive assessment of remote work options by the greater workforce, there is also the question of whether what pushes this increased loyalty to companies that allow employees to work remotely, and for remote work jobs itself, comes from the intrinsic nature of remote work; or, namely from the context of the corona virus itself with the desolation of mass of unemployment lingering all around and the hyper-present threat of being forced to come into an office that would expose workers to the deadly virus acting as a strong rod for disciplining labor in the hands of the firm. In very simple terms, the desire to engage in remote work has become a desire to stay employed itself and a rationalization of the situation they find themselves in. The automation that threatened so many jobs before the pandemic has found itself accelerated in this context leading to an increase in structural employment that will see many jobs and sectors of work most likely not coming back at all after the pandemicxcvii. The McKinsey Global
Institute found that 20 percent of business travel will not come back and around 20 percent of workers could end up working from home indefinitely, while the Pew Research Center found that two-thirds of unemployed workers have seriously considered changing their occupation or
383 field of workxcviii. Remote work might be seen simply by workers as one of the few stabile sources of employment that could both offer a secure and safe form of employment amidst the existential precarity brought about by the corona virus and attendant economic downturn, as well the form of employment that will most likely survive the pandemic unscathed. Understanding the role of this pandemic context in shaping attitudes amidst transitions to remote work is important for considering its future implications in general.
With the mass expansion of remote work to the American workforce, the nature of work and production, and the needs of labor and capital, have shifted in ways whose repercussions are likely to be felt for decades after the corona virus. How have and will these changes in the nature of work triggered by the pandemic, and the unique spatial circumstances of quarantine that shape how work is altered, impact the relationships between work, place and self along similar and divergent lines as the dynamics of digital nomadhood investigated in this dissertation? What happens when the global city’s monopoly on spatially centralized employment dissolves overnight, even in the limited sectors that were able to transition to working remotely? How will this play out spatially? The connection between remote work, quarantine and the city has emerged as a clear and present narrative in mainstream media, with the New York Times early acknowledging that a crisis of production, uniquely put into motion and accelerated by a pandemic which makes co-presence in population dense urban centers an existential threat, triggers a corresponding crisis in social reproduction and the city itself. “Even after the crisis eases, companies may let workers stay home. That would affect an entire ecosystem, from transit to restaurants to shops. Not to mention the tax base.xcix” Some of these concerns over the potential death of the city can be viewed as a form of hysteria, especially considering the limited
384 amount of the actual workforce able to transition to remote work and its restriction to relatively high-paying professional class jobs. However, the conditions of the pandemic and quarantine do ask everyone with the privilege to be able to do so to shut themselves away from the world around them, nihilating their everyday experiences of space itself, and forcing them to consider the costs and benefits of the high rents and mortgages they pay in global cities when they could relocate to better housing in population sparse areas at lower costs. And, with the loss of these high-income populations who are supported by and make possible a host of consumption-based industries in the city, their flight could lead to the death of whole sectors of subordinate and place-based jobs. These subordinate social reproductive sectors could disappear completely or eventually be relocated to the areas these populations choose to relocate to, forcing a corresponding mobility upon those who, by nature of their place-based social reproductive employment, were left behind and stuck in the global cities these remote workers left.
The geographic differentials mentioned above, both the pursuit of residences in areas with lower costs of living and lower population density by workers, but also the wage cuts that firms followed this mobility up with, hinted at the tensions underlying the use of mobility by labor as a tool to better its own condition and position amidst the corona virus. How does the act and power of mobility change in a circumstance of extreme immobility like that of corona virus and its corresponding quarantine procedures? Since the beginning of the pandemic “the average person in the United States had reduced their daily mobility by between 45-55% as of late April, 2020 and had reduced their daily contacts between 65-75%.” c Furthermore, the travel and airline industry has plummeted, being amongst the hardest hit by the contagion triggered virus that makes mobility itself a liability for all involved. The International Civil Aviation Organization
385 found that airline “capacity fell by around 60 percent last year, with just 1.8 billion passengers taking flight in 2020 compared with around 4.5 billion in 2019. That resulted in a staggering loss to the airlines of around $370 billion.” ci The frequent and episodic mobility of digital nomadhood, one of the two hallmarks of the lifestyle that distinguishes it as a unique field, has seen a drastic reduction in its scope, with the expanded remote workforce less able to be mobile than almost any time before. The location-independence that remote work promised has suffered a serious blow in the range of possibilities it offers in relation to mobility, revealing a harsh divide between those who are able to engage in mobility in these circumstance and those who are not, between the pre-pandemic digital nomad and the corona virus produced remote worker, between motion and fixity.
This does not mean that mobility itself has dropped off the table as a desired practice and act amongst the general population, with Flexjobs finding that 27% of their remote working respondents are considering a move in response to the pandemic cii, but that the form and calculations underlying mobility have changed. The mobility of even those digital nomads who are still able to travel in some fashion will become less frequent and most likely more long-term and circulatory, or even one way. This is already being evidenced by the move of upper-class
New Yorkers and families from cities to the suburbs and rural areas who are waiting out the pandemic in vacation areas and at second homes in the Hamptons and the mountainsciii, with it likely that those who are able to work remotely with lessor means following suit. This may become the dominant type of movement occurring among the digital nomad and remote work populations even after the pandemic, circulatory movement between rural, population sparse, and vacation-area sited home-bases peppered with short stints to global cities due to the necessity for
386 periodic face to face interactions. The circuits of mobility investigated in this dissertation, to the global city and away from it to offbeat cities, would remain dominant but their meaning and juxtaposition will have changed. If this is the long-term trend, then these observed types of pandemic-mobility could possibly be foreshadowing a new return to the land movement, or a new round of white flight from cities, especially given the context of the George Floyd and
Black Lives Matter uprisings and police riots erupting in the wake of these processes.
Work and mobility have both undergone significant and rapid changes as a result of the pandemic. How have these changes influenced urban prospecting logics and which types of locations will be pursued in future bouts of mobility? What impacts will these changes in urban prospecting outcomes have on all different types of cities and socio-spatial formations? There are many likely possibilities resulting from pandemic-inspired urban prospecting, with many of them occurring simultaneously and most likely impacting one another, though we will have to wait and see which becomes dominant over time. Remote work could play the role of the highways in the 1950s making suburbia and white flight possible, initiating a new phase of suburbanization and rural gentrification that leads to the decline of cities again for a generation, leaving non- remote workers stranded in the new inner-city or forced to follow remote workers wherever they go. It could also simply siphon off a relative labor aristocracy depending on which types of workers leave in mass, making these cities affordable again for those lower down the income and occupational spectrum, opening up more opportunities within them and making achieving and maintaining residency in the city more possible. The possibility of this result is evidenced by San
Franciscociv and Manhattan’scv increases in housing inventories and listing price drops over the past year, as well as by Zillow’s findingcvi that “4.5% of renters in the U.S. (nearly 2 million
387 renter households) who would otherwise be priced out of their current market can now purchase a starter home somewhere else in the U.S., thanks to remote work.” cvii It could also lead to the growth of smaller second and third tier cities, with most remote workers and those engaging in pandemic mobility willing to gamble on the survival of cities post-pandemic while also seeking to experience a lifestyle upgrade associated with lower costs of living. This opens up the possibility for heartland America, other non-high-priced cities and rural areas to compete for those who are becoming mobile and can afford to eat the salary losses, or do so by seeking the largest comparative advantage between wages and the cost of living.
The distribution of these outcomes will be unevenly distributed between those cities whose economies were built around the 67% of the US workforce whose jobs required significant onsite presence, potentially buffering them from worker and flight-based economic losses, and those cities who economies were built largely around the industries who were able to transition most of their workforces to remote work. This is also a liability for those locales that were able to attract these populations during the pandemic, that their mobility in the first place was made possible by their lack of employment-based ties to place, making mobility away from their pandemic homes after the virus ends more than possible. These outcomes can be mediated by public policy and the action of local, city and state governments to attract and capture these populations, but also depends on the existence of particular historical and embedded infrastructures that make these populations’ ways of life possible, the Brookings Institute arguing that the existence of research universities and their milieus of innovation are one such draw for the mobile tech community amidst the pandemic cviii. Which locales are selected by these pandemic urban prospecting logics will depend on the infrastructures that they already host, not
388 restricted to one form of infrastructure, similar to how the “offbeat” in Dharmasala was made possible and actualized due to historically created infrastructures of spirituality, nature and tourism that became relevant for people looking for an alternative to the city. This crisis highlights and selects other types of infrastructures, places and types of refuges that become sought out by these mobile populations in response to their particular experiences of the pandemic. The nature of the Offbeat cities that digital nomads pursued to begin with will shift in accordance with the lived context of the pandemic and its own contingent variation of the new urban crisis. The pandemic has produced many new possibilities for and challenges to labor mobility moving forward, accelerating and altering the experience of the new urban crisis in different directions and providing different “solutions”. The pandemic has shown how the mobility of labor, and the expansion of remote work fueling it, engenders corresponding mobility and a response from capital, the spatial fixes produced by labor mobility limited and bracketed depending on which fixes capital selects as beneficial to its own ends and which it will attempt to block from existence. All of this is to say that contrary to being made irrelevant by the historical disruption of the corona virus, urban prospecting still matters, maybe more now than ever for cities and workers alike, and its terrain of operation is shifting along with its potential outcomes.
389 Methodological Appendix
I am primarily concerned with both the production of a particular type of subjectivity, that influenced by the socio-spatial formations that these mobile individuals find themselves in, but also in the emerging subjectivities and discourses that make mobility and flight to other socio-spatial formations an option. It is then, with an understanding of the subjectivities and discourses being produced, yearned from the population on the ground, that I then want to investigate the impacts the mobility of this population has on the places they flow to. I am investigating this from both the perspective of these mobile individuals, the changing geographies of employment and social reproduction they inherit and produce, and the effects that the movements and connections of this mobile middle population have and could have on the places they flow to. In order to get at both the subjectivities, discourses, and social/economic/cultural impacts of this population on the socio-spatial formations they flow to,
I am going to be employing a mixed methods approach in this project, conducting ethnographic case studies coupled with a more macro charting of this populations’ movement around the globe. I conducted a multi-sited ethnography (George E. Marcus, Ethnography In/Of the World
System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography), with ethnographic fieldwork conducted at a co-living space in Los Angeles, as well as one in Dharmsala, India. I also built a social network model based on data from a digital nomad social networking website nomadlist.com which shows me on a macro-level how this population is making new global networks between cities in ways we wouldn’t necessarily expect, and reveal newly forming global urban networks and potential changes in socio-spatial formations not yet accounted for in the literature. I integrate these various forms of qualitative and quantitative data by both utilizing Sheller and Urry’s new mobilities paradigm as well as Sassen’s own framework for studying global cities as part of
390 relational urban networks. The end goal was to investigate the plethora of micro-level interpretations and reactions to the new urban crisis and chart the different trends and growing bodies and movements emerging therein as they aggregate into macro-level forces, utilizing co- living spaces and discourses on digital nomads as the infrastructure and meso-level forces that make this transition from divergent micro-level forces to narrowing and unifying macro-level forces legible.
My Approach to Multi-Sited Ethnography
In this study, I used multi-sited ethnography as both a comparative approach, as well as a way to uncover transnational urban networks and processes. I performed my ethnographic fieldwork in two very different locations, in one co-living space in the heart of the global north, the American Global City of Los Angeles, and the other in a very “off the map” (Robinson) location in a arguably rural mountain village setting just outside the small Indian cities of
McLeod Ganj and Dharamsala in what could be described as the global south. Each of these contexts is very different, but the co-living spaces in each location catered to similar populations and found themselves to be home to similar transnational processes, allowing me to retain a comparative capacity when analyzing the fieldwork conducted in each. My approach to multi- sited ethnography in this study was to compare the use of co-living spaces as infrastructure in different cities throughout the global north and south, as well as teasing out the transnational processes that make these co-living spaces unique windows for studying a common population and global trend. I compared both the populations flowing through these spaces, the cultural practices and frames emerging in these spaces, and the functions these spaces were being used for within each context. Through analyzing and describing the different ways these
391 infrastructures relate to different global city functions in varied locales, I hoped to follow
Ananya Roy’s (2009) call to “worlding”, observing how the global city functions studied in the global north and south can be found in either. I hypothesized that the developing global city functions, and their attendant infrastructures, seen in my field site in India would also be visible in Los Angeles, the processes of the cities of global south found within the cities of the global north, and vice versa. This approach aimed to uncover how these populations and processes related as well as diverged, as well as ascertain the impact these reactions and processes have on all the other components of both the local and transnational socio-spatial formations they flow through.
The primary method of data collection and analysis employed was participant observation and semi-structured interviewing, informed by broader values and techniques pulled from ethnographic practice. The cultural practices performed within these spaces, as well as the way these practices conditioned or informed particular constellations of mobility (Cresswell,
2010), constituted the focus of this portion of my fieldwork. I kept a written journal to record my observations within these space, capturing actions as they happened, and logged who flowed in and out of these space for the duration of my time in the field. I also conducted semi-structured interviews relating to informants biographical background that led them to engage in mobility to these places and their current careers and ways of life. These field notes and transcribed interviews served as the store of data from which I drew inferences and conclusions, following
John Loftland’s (1995) approach to “analytic ethnography” (Snow, Morill, &Anderson 2003) in an attempt to refine and extend the current understandings of post-industrial class formation and the urban nomad section of the precariat, fleshing out the cultural practices centered around the
392 mobility of this class. To analyze the field notes I wrote while conducting participant observation, I first personally transcribed my hand-written field-jottings into structured, chronological field notes, and then coded them using category-generating methods borrowed from Loftland et al. (2006), similar to the methods employed by ethnographers in trying to produce grounded theory through open coding (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), but building new codes and themes which could be plugged back into the theory I expanded on and added to under the analytic ethnography approach, using grounded theory as an emergent method (Charmaz, 2008).
An Ethnography of the PodShare Co-Living Network in Los Angeles, USA
I chose the PodShare located in Los Angeles, CA as one focus of my fieldwork, as the site provided me with a unique window for studying the dynamics of Standings’ Urban
Nomads (Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, 2011), billing itself as a haven for
“digital nomads”, in the city that birthed the Los Angeles School of Post-Modern Urbanism
(Dear, 2000). The site advertised itself as “a social network with a physical address”, that was attempting to “combat loneliness” in the digital age, advocating “access over ownership.” The
PodShare described itself as “a membership based live/work community” in which mobile individuals can come together to create community in a “freelance economy”. The PodShare aimed to address the “need for affordable housing in urban cities + adaptive re-use of space” providing a new space in which increasingly mobile freelance professionals and travelers could work and live. The site itself, during the time of my study, was comprised of two networked co- living spaces, with the addition of three more being in the planning stages, arranging itself according to a highly insular postmodern logic of urbanization. The two sites, one in the Arts
District and the other in Hollywood, were meant to be equally accessible by residents, or as the
393 founder terms them Podestrians. A podestrian residing at one site was allowed full access to the other site as well. The website billed the space as servicing three primary populations: social travelers, temporary workers, and transitioners, fitting the definition of Standings’ young urban nomads mentioned above, whose subjectivity, discourse, and action served as the subject of study in this dissertation. In order to study these populations and understand the processes that I set out to investigate above, I conducted three and a half weeks, 24 days, of participant observation in the Downtown Los Angeles location of the PodShare from late June to mid July in
2016. I lived as a resident amongst the other Podestrians occupying this co-living space, spending time moving back and forth to the Hollywood location. I entered the space under the same conditions as any other resident, living among other podestrians, following the same pace of life, introducing myself to those who were open to socializing, and participated in everyday interactions.
The research I undertook at this site considered how post-industrial workers have adapted their work practices, and the space they occupy, in order to meet the demands of both the post- industrial economy and post-modern urbanization. I wanted to connect analyses of macro- processes focusing on the how the flexibility of capital has affected urban processes with an in- depth study on the ways in which individuals were affected by and reacted to these global processes; capturing the micro-processes of agency embedded within these structures helped to develop an understanding of how these macro-trends played out in their particular manifestations. I hypothesized that co-working/co-living spaces could be read as reactions to these co-determining processes of post-industrialization and post-modern urbanism, having understood these trends as the aggregate of particular reactions and adaptations to the structural
394 status-quo. The primary research question I asked of this site was: How can the PodShare be understood as a reaction to processes of post-industrialization and the new urban crisis? This motivated the following particular site-focused research questions: Does the PodShare represent a structural answer to the needs of the post-industrial economy, providing a space that makes these processes possible? Does the PodShare represent a space that allows contracting workers to remain flexible to the demands of the market, allowing the post-industrial subject and worker to exist? Is the PodShare a reaction against the structure and way of life forced upon the worker in the post-modern city in crisis? Is the PodShare focused more on its mission as a network builder or its status as a profit-seeking business? How does the community and culture of PodShare get created? How does it endure over time with its ever-changing and flexible member-base? How do decisions get made within the space? Where does it fit into the political economy of Los
Angeles and beyond? Are its residents working for Los Angeles corporations and businesses which require temporary physical proximity or are they working remotely and bringing the work with them? Who are these residents working for? Why are they there? What about Pod-Share speaks to them? What new networks does the PodShare foster both inside Los Angeles and to the cities beyond it? In order to answer these questions, I interacted with and spoke with the two prime populations of interest in the space, which overlapped and have their own sub-divisions: the staff and the residents.
By conducting interviews with the staff and founders of the organization, who conduct their business within the Pod-Share itself and invite resident contribution, I was able to understand the multiple visions and meanings attributed to the space. I investigated the history of the business, getting to know the how the founders initially conceived of the space. I also aimed
395 to understand the process by which the PodShare was developed and set up within Los Angeles. how the founders went about securing funding, permits, permissions and properties, and the struggles they faced in setting it up. I also wanted to know what network they had before they set up the space and how they used it and built upon it to establish themselves. I also wanted to explore how they went about marketing and growing the business, asking them how the established space differed from their plans for it, how they adapted to new challenges, and where they saw the business heading. I also asked them about how they incorporate the resident base into the decision-making structure. I wanted to understand how the staff and founders interacted with the residents, what roles and dynamics existed between them and how ownership of the space was divided and played out. I inquired into how the different sites that PodShare owned and maintained interacted with one another, inquiring into how these spaces were brought together, what events and bridges tied them, and how they differed in both built environment, policies, culture and style. I inquired into the daily management and responsibilities of the staff, focusing on day to day operations, rules, policy, and member expectations; I asked how their policies have changed over time and what issues and events they responded to. I wanted to know how the PodShare supported and sustained itself, asking whether the very nature of it being a for-profit business has ever conflicted with its values and missions. I ascertained what partnerships and coalitions the PodShare had entered into and how it saw itself within the communities it was located in. I further inquired into the culture of the PodShare, asking them which basic stories, experiences, inside jokes and common understandings permeated the space and how they were transmitted to new members. I wanted to know how any type of history or culture continued and maintained itself within a space like this that had an ever-changing occupant base.
396
By interviewing other residents, I was able to better understand who they were and where they came from, testing whether the space was best understood as a result of the above identified processes. I talked to residents to determine what work they were doing, how they plugged into the city, who they worked for, and the nature of their participation within the Pod-Share. By asking them about their life histories, I hoped to be able to understand and catalogue their motivations for coming to Los Angeles and for partaking in the PodShare lifestyle and experience. The PodShare claimed that it had roughly three types of members: (1) social travelers, (2) transitioning members, and (3) temporary workers. I used these categories to organize and categorize my interviews, asking specific questions for each and also sought to test whether these space-created categories were firmly entrenched in the space or whether they are merely used for the purposes of marketing. I asked the social travelers what brought them to the space and how the reality of the space differed from their expectations. Whether they met anyone outside of the PodShare while they were traveling, and whether these connections lasted beyond their stay. I observed where social travelers visited during their stay, trying to determine whether the PodShare was the central hub of their visit, constituting what was being visited or whether it was an alternative to hostels or airbnb’s. I catalogued where the social travelers were visiting from and how long they were staying. For the transitioning members, those moving to Los
Angeles and using Pod Share as a temporary means of shelter, I investigated why these individuals were moving to Los Angeles. I checked to see whether they were moving for work, with jobs already lined up, or actively seeking them. I investigated whether these individuals already knew people in the Los Angeles area, or whether they were completely new and contactless in the area. I furthermore asked them about their expectations of the PodShare in
397 order to understand why each person decided to give it a try. I also asked them about the differences between their expectations for the space and whether they clashed with the reality. I investigated whether the idea of Co-Working or Co-living was new to them or whether they had past experiences with it, also whether the co-working aspect of it was a draw. I asked them how they have used the PodShare network to obtain resources and connections such as jobs, housing, and other things they could not have found outside of the network. I think this information helped to test whether it was proper to read the PodShare as an expression of David Reisman’s post-industrial other-directed culture, centered on forming and building social networks which give rise to more work and professional opportunities. For the third and final group, the temporary workers, I most wanted to understand what type of work they did and how the
PodShare was the best space for allowing them to do it. It is this group of PodShare members that served as the best case to test the hypotheses and theories of post-industrial work and labor.
These individuals were using the PodShare to maintain mobility and flexibility in the service of attracting temporary work, giving us a key insight into David Bell’s knowledge class, Colin
Crouch’s service workers and Guy Standing’s Precariat. I wanted to know where these individuals were employed and in what capacity. Were they intellectual labor contractors, using their high skills to work on projects near and abroad, using the PodShare as a homebase or for its proximity to work in Los Angeles? Were they low-wage service workers chasing seasonal and temporary work because they had no alternatives? Or was it because they were using these temporary jobs as stop-gaps in-between school and careers? Or did the temporary jobs represent opportunities to break into new industries and eventual careers? I furthermore wanted to know how they used the co-working/co-living space. Did they work primarily out of the PodShare or its attached co-working lab? Was the PodShare mainly just their place to crash and socialize?
398 What was the relationship between the people who rented desks at the co-working lab and the
PodShare members who were co-living and co-working? Was there a pipeline between the two?
Did co-livers become co-workers when they moved out of the space?
All of these questions and hypotheses directed towards different populations at the
PodShare guided my data collection and analysis. Overall, I interacted with 100+ podestrians over my 24 days in the space, conducting only 3 recorded formal interviews, all with staff, while engaging in ethnographic conversations with the rest of my informants. The high turn-over rate at the PodShare made it difficult to develop longer term connections allowing for the time that longer formal interviews would have taken. Instead, I participated in the social life of the space and wrote 120 pages of field notes chronicling my interactions with the different populations and the conversations and activities that were had in the space. I let everyone I met and directly interacted with know of my project and role as a researcher before engaging them in conversation, and peppered in my questions of interest into our conversation depending on the sub-population of podestrian I met. I do belive that I spent more time in the PodShare than almost all of the other residents aside from the staff, attempting to meet as many people as I could. This did limit me to interacting most with those who also spent a lot of their time in Los
Angeles in the PodShare as opposed to those who used it as more of a crash pad and spent the majority of their time outside the space and in the city itself. It also confined my access to the most social members of this population who engaged in co-living and the socialization of the space the most, those looking to meet people, make connections, and explore the city together, exposing me the most to social travelers, staff members, and those using the PodShare to transition into the city, while temporary workers, freelancers, and other more business-oriented
399 and solitary residents kept more to themselves or only slept there, with important exceptions.
These temporary workers, especially those who made use of the PodShare for socialization, used their work and purpose in the city as a piece of social capital that even in their brief interactions with others was employed concisely and effectively, giving snapshots of their lives and what drew them to Los Angeles and the space in general, serving as a data source for distinguishing them from and comparing them to other residents.
An Ethnography of the Ghoomakad Co-Living Space in Dharamsala, India
My other field-site for this study was the Ghoomakad co-living space located in the village of Rakkar-Sidbari in the Himalayan foothills, just outside the cities of McLeod Ganj and
Dharamsala in India where I spent just over two months, or 65 days, living out of the space full time. The space grew out of the northward move of former students from Jaaga In. (a paired co- living space and incubator in Bangalore), who sought out a refuge from the city, looking to bring
“people back to the basics while making sure they have the infrastructure available to get things done”. They marketed themselves as a co-working, co-living, and creative space aimed at digital nomads, startup teams, and backpackers. They had a hacker space which brought tech workers to the area regularly for start-up events and contracted coding work. They offered many amenities relating to their mountainous rural location such as organic farming, daytrekking, and mountain survival camps. They also banked off of their position proximate to many temples, monasteries, and Tibetan exile settlements. The space was perfect for capturing both internal Indian migrants sick of the city as well as digital nomads looking for a unique cultural experience. It represented the convergence of the global flows I mentioned above and provided a perfect window to study the interactions between these populations and the use of the co-living infrastructure in
400 coordinating and capturing global flows. It also opened up the question of what was urban about these global city functions, as here I was seeing global city functions coupled with a rural environment. This brought me back to one of the main motivating thrusts of this study, to understand how socio-spatial formations, and the connections between them, were changing in a manner that accommodated for the emergence of these processes, which were typically anchored in global cities, in the context of a drastically different socio-spatial formation.
Ghoomakad in Dharamsala had the capacity to lodge up to 40 people and host events of up to 80. During my time at the space the populations staying and working at Ghoomakad would flowing in and out at different times, with population turnover occurring regularly following swells for coding and bootcamp events and lows in-between them. During my time there, as many as 150 individuals entered the space and I interacted with as many of these individuals as possible, observing and sharing space with a large number of them; however, I was only able to get to know and able to interview a fraction of this population. I was able to get 16 formal and recorded interviews ranging from 1-3 hours long, while interacting, conversing and writing field notes about another 30-40 Ghoomakad residents I came to know personally. I wrote over 600 pages of field notes, which along with the 16 interviews served as the store of data that I drew from for writing the Ghoomakad chapter of the dissertation. As far as the populations I engaged with, there were two main groups: (1) the staff and founders of the co-living spaces, and (2) the residents. While these groups were analytically separable, the fact that the staff and founders themselves reside in the space made their actual separation harder to ascertain, to delineate when they engage in the space and with others as a resident or as a staff member. I made strong connections with the staff, the trio managing the space, and was on friendly terms with the
401 founders of the space. I worked to gain information from these individuals regarding the history and functioning of the space, ascertaining how the space came to be and what the intentions of the founders were. Once I reached a saturation point in interviews regarding this background place information, I then shifted towards prioritizing the biographical information about both staff and residents, trying to understand the populations present in the space and their reasons for coming there, getting at my broader research questions. This shift also represented a shift from ascertaining knowledge about the history of the space, to charting and describing the types of actions, practices, lifestyles, and interactions that occured within the space itself.
As for the residents, I hypothesized that I would encounter roughly two distinct populations. (1) a population of highly-skilled and highly educated Indian young adults, from roughly the ages of 18-35 with most of the staff members, taken as residents, falling in this population. Many were drawn to the co-living spaces for the opportunity to live out in nature, outside the city, while still being able to do remote coding and contracting work with other remote workers around them. They used the space to meet other remote workers to court future contracting work but also to develop social networks to collaborate in the future, creating opportunities to start new businesses and enterprises. Due to their ability to do coding work as well as move to these areas, this population was relatively affluent, coming from middle or upper-middle class backgrounds, with enough human capital to attract decent incomes and engage in high levels of consumption. Many of these individuals were internal Indian migrants, with many either trying to or already having worked abroad. Some of these workers were NRI’s
(non-resident Indians) coming here after having lived and worked abroad elsewhere, either for a short period of time or to move back to India. (2) The other major population I encountered was
402 that of Western Back-Packers and Tech Workers. This population was comprised of residents from mainly so-called first-world or global north countries such as the United States, the United
Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, etc. This population was younger from the ages of 18-35, with the backpackers towards the younger end of that range (18-25) and the tech workers towards the upper end (25-35). This population was fairly well off, coming from middle and upper class backgrounds, based around their ability to travel and live abroad. The back packers were moderately educated, with most of them having completed high school and some with college back grounds in keeping with other research looking at back packer populations. This population was focused on participating in activities of consumption and cultural experience, using the space as an area to meet people and have unique experiences, travelling around the area and coming back to the space at night time. The tech workers were even more highly-educated, coming with skills that had enabled them to work abroad and become ex patriates. They also had more resources than back packers. They used the space in a manner more similar to the Indian young adults, a place to work from but also to meet other people through, attracted to its ability to allow for remote work but also capitalizing off of meeting other tech workers who could lead them to more work or represented future collaborations. These populations mixed together in the co-working/hacker-space at Ghoomakad. This hacker-space was meant for people to work remotely from and included many contracting employees and tech workers, as well as some small entrepreneurs working together to get contracting businesses off the ground. The people using this space were a compilation of the populations mentioned above, with only the activity they were doing in these spaces differentiating them from those outside the hacker-space, those only occupying the co-living space.
403 Computational Social Science
The ethnographic fieldwork and case studies conducted above gave me plenty of deep- description about the lifeworld of this mobile population living through the new urban crisis.
This fieldwork aimed to reveal and catalogue the wide variety of interpretations, experiences and discourses this population produced. The next step of the project was to chart how these plural and divergent subjectivities and discourses aggregated into larger evaluative frameworks guiding action on a larger macro-level, and to understand the dominant trends emerging from this population globally. To do this, I jumped from the lifeworld considered through ethnographic fieldwork to the mobilities emerging globally covered through their imprint on the internet. The methods of the computational social sciences allowed me to best capture and interact with these emergent transnational congealing sources of action and mobility through social networking sites utilized by this population where they charted their mobility between cities globally. The methods used in this section of my dissertation were computational text analysis, social network analysis, and mapping. By approaching this source as representations of my mobile population of study, in the records of their movement, I attempted to tie the disparate experiences and subjectivities of this population found in the lifeworld into their congelation as a set of dominant discourses and new connections between cities, producing new urban networks and changes in socio-spatial formations globally. If this type of population could be considered the future, or at least a large growing minority population within the top or medium tiers of production, how were their movements changing the ways that cities connect to one another? How were they changing networks of production and consumption? Was this happening along the same lines that globalized production of firms was? Was this following or changing the geographies of talent and work that we have seen arise out of the Global Cities and Creative Cities frameworks?
404 How were these mobile workers creating new types of global flows that could alter and affect others?
Mapping the Trajectories of Digital Nomads
For this project, I constructed and mapped a social network graph for analysis by compiling data from nomadlist.com, a social networking site for digital nomads. For data collection, I noticed that each city page on the nomadlist contains text data at the bottom of the page which denotes where people went after they went to the city in question, in the form of
“People traveling from Chiang Mai to Bangkok (108)”. This text data was almost already in the perfect format to create an edge list, the raw data necessary for a social network model. Chiang
Mai served as a source node, Bangkok as the target node, and 108 as the edge weight. Being able to scrape all of this text from each city page allowed me to construct a large social network model charting all the global movements of remote workers and digital nomads as logged on this social networking website, giving me a look at the different urban networks and configurations of cities being constructed by the movement of the study population. I went through all the city pages on the site that had this connection data at the bottom of them, copy+pasting all, and dumping the html output into a raw text file. After completing this for the top 737 cities, not being able to manually find any other pages, I wrote a text-parsing code using regular expressions to pull out whatever city name laid after “People travelling from”, after “to”, and the number in the parentheses after the second city name. I ran this script through the entire raw text file, pulling out these values and separating them by commas, creating a CSV file in the form of an edge list. The first city name was the source, the second name the target, and the number the directed edge-weight. I then cleaned the generated edge list using find & replace to find instances
405 where the same source was named differently when it was a target, an example being Miami which appeared as both “Miami” in the source list, and “Miami, FL” in the target list.
After cleaning, I imported the CSV Edge List into Gephi, a social network GUI, with directed edges. The program created an unfiltered network graph showing all 10,000 connections between the 737 city nodes. Using the program, I generated a new column showing the number of weighted edge degrees that touched each node, both flowing in and out of any given node. In
Gephi, I sized and colored the nodes that had the highest weighted edge degrees, showing me which cities were most trafficked by digital nomads. I also manipulated how visible the edges
(connections) were between these nodes. Gephi provided a number of visualization tools and algorithms for manipulating how the nodes were arranged such as centrality measures and modularity groups. These tools helped me identify both which nodes (cities) were central to the mobility of digital nomads, serving both as top destinations as well intermediary points for their travel, as well as revealed which cities were the most heavily networked with each other, revealing emergent urban networks for analysis and perusal. While these layouts were interesting, and the measures and visualization tools provided valuable information, there was no spatial logic to the data at this point, the movement through space being key in understanding the mobility of my target population. As I was investigating links between cities, their geography and the distance between them mattered. Even if I could isolate and make the dominant nodes more visible with the current state of the data, I needed more of a spatial grounding for being able to pull out and interpret the relationships between these cities. To this end, l utilized the
Gephi Plug-In, GeoLayout, which allowed me to add the gps-coordinates for my nodes and maps them on a Mercator projection grid. Being that my data did not come with gps-coordinates, I
406 exported a CSV with only the City-Node names, and then Geo-Coded them through a batch geocoding engine (https://www.doogal.co.uk/BatchGeocoding.php). This engine returned the names with the corresponding Latitude and Longitude values. After checking this list for errors, I imported this CSV to Gephi and added these columns as node attributes, matching the CSVs on
Node Name. This allowed me to map the nodes and begin to tease out spatial and topographical relationships in the network.
From the network model, constructed in this manner, I then ranked this list of digital nomad cities by both the number of edge connections each city had, the weight of these edges representing how many digital nomads were travelling in and out of the city, as well as separate rankings based on the different network centrality measures at my disposal, each measuring how central a city was in the overall flow of digital nomads globally. I used these list of rankings to both highlight which cities were most frequently trafficked by and central to digital nomad flows, but also as a way of comparing these ranking and cities present in these lists to other city ranking indexes, such as the list of global cities and sub-types produced by GWAC, the creative class city index, and others. Through these comparisons, I teased out what other types of flows and urban attributes that define the global and creative city ranking and groupings overlapped with those that led to high rankings and centrality of digital nomad population flows. I also ran community detection algorithms on the network model that clustered the city nodes in the model into modularity groups, essentially those sub-regions in the network where there was more density between the cities within these groups than between them. By examining which cities were in which modularity groups, and the relationships between the cities in these groups, and between these modularity groups themselves, I teased out and explored possible explanations for
407 why some of these relationships existed, both on the level of what was known about digital nomads and the evaluative frameworks guiding their mobility gleaned from my fieldwork, but also from the spatial and geo-political relationships between the cities and regions in consideration. The ranked lists of cities produced above helped me understand these modularity groupings and identify which cities connected different modularity groups, helping me understand the bottlenecks and central nodes in coordinating global nomad travel between and within these regions.
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416 Notes
Chapter 1 Notes i Namely that intellectual labor clustered in the producer services sector centered around finance, real estate, insurance, research & development, marketing, etc. ii The literature on post-industrialism (Bell 1979; Blackburn 1972; Esping-Anderson 1993 Harrison 1994; Harvey 2005; Henwood 1979) puts these changes in production, in the units of the firm and of the class of intellectual labor incorporated into and coordinating the global production process, forward as the primary dynamics guiding the transition to post-industrialism. The literature on global cities (Abu-Lughod 1999; Castells [1996] 2002, 2010; Friedmann & Wolff 1982; Harvey 1989; Sassen 2001, 2005, 2016), most notably Saskia Sassen’s The Global City (2001), unpacks the different dynamics and structures of the small set of “command and control center” cities around the globe most impacted by these changes in production. These authors describe the changes in the sector of production and how they localize in a particular set of urban class structures unique to this post-industrial production, specifically at the high-skill class of post-industrial intellectual workers who are essential to coordinating global production and the low-skill service class that reproduces them. They argue that the socio- spatial formation of the global city, an urban structure organized around the spatial clustering of this new class of post-industrial high-skill workers, produces its own specific relations of production. This high-skill class creates the demand for a low-skill labor force to reproduce itself, creating a bi-furcated class structure. The relations between the two terms of this bi-furcated class structure are seen as inducing the social-polarization of urban space in the form of increasing inequality and rising housing prices, the core features of the new urban crisis. If these features appear in areas that this socio-spatial formation, and its corresponding class structure, are not present then there must be other changes outside the realm of production that are also causing these features to emerge. iii For post-industrialization to occur, the new locations of its existence had to be prepared. Following the literature on the New International Division of Labor (Froebel, Heinrichs, & Kreye, 1981; Starosta 2016) “underdeveloped” nations have changed from serving as sources of minerals and agricultural products for the world economy, to becoming the new sites of manufacture. Western capital sought to solve its overaccumulation crisis by finding lower labor and raw material costs in “developing” countries, allowing them to increase their levels of exploitation and thus realization of relative surplus value. However, these countries had to be prepared to accept these relations of production. Many of these nations were former colonies, whose domestic industries were nascent and nationalized post-colonialization, a noticeable barrier to directing relative surplus value back to west. These countries had to be made to accept the relations of production that would benefit western post-industrial nations, which would include the privatization of national industries and the acceptance of direct foreign investment. This was done through the west’s international development institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, which gave out structural adjustment loans requiring recipient nations to privatize national industries and open to foreign investment to receive the funds that would allow them to maintain themselves. This decimated public sector employment and put forth austerity measures cutting social spending, which together forced workers to accept the low wages and terms of employment in EPZs and maquiladores. iv These measures helped capital increase its exploitation and realization of relative surplus value, but also facilitated a different accumulation project speaking to the latter purpose of the neoliberal political project: what David Harvey (2004) refers to as accumulation by dispossession, or primitive accumulation by predation, fraud, and violence. Harvey objects to this form of accumulation being relegated to an original stage preceding capitalism in Marx’s work, arguing that this form of accumulation has continued to play a recurring historical role in the extended reproduction of the capitalist system: “Accumulation by dispossession can occur in a variety of ways and there is much that is both contingent and haphazard about its modus operandi. Yet it is omnipresent in no matter what historical period and picks up strongly when crises of overaccumulation occur in expanded reproduction, when there seems to be no other exit except devaluation.” (Harvey, 2004, 76)
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Accumulation by dispossession plays a historic role in preparing the capitalist social formation, as well as responding to its crises, and takes on a variety of forms and processes not limited to the commodification and privatization of common land, the expulsion of peasant populations, the conversion of property rights, the commodification of labor power, the appropriation of assets, etc. Harvey (2004, 2005) investigates the role that accumulation by dispossession has played in the neoliberal epoch, noting that it is the new form of imperialism carried by other means: rather than being ushered in by the point of a sword, it is carried out by finance and its attendant global institutions at the behest of the United States and western capital. The structural adjustment loans of the IMF and World Bank not only prepared the receiving countries to accept the post-industrial capitalist social relations necessary for globalized production, but also served as an appropriation of assets from the “underdeveloped” countries back to the core, a raiding of domestic industries and untapped capital sources in the forms of state services/expenditures and worker savings that could be opened up and brought onto the world market. v Class as a descriptor is limited to production, the property conferred on a given population based on their position within the production process, whereas other properties are conferred on the same population when they enter the other elements of the regime of accumulation. Class is too restrictive, and itself changing and dependent on how it is incorporated into the broader regime of accumulation, not narrowly within the production process. The production process has become non-linear, additions to the process entering at different stages based on their skills and location in the world, and the level at which labor is sought. Production becomes ad hoc, and as such does not produce the same static class positions. vi I take Standing’s segment of the precariat, the young urban nomads, as the base from which I build and investigate my population of interest. Young Urban Nomads are the youth who have come to age in the era of precaritization, holding high levels of education but saddled with the corresponding student debt and presented with a dearth of good jobs. Instead, they are confronted with low-paying, temporary, contracted jobs located within cities that are becoming harder and harder to access. They must access these cities for any hope of achieving higher incomes and life chances than where they come from (Moretti 2013) but are faced with the environment of the new urban crisis. It is their lack of a firm tenancy within a revitalizing urban center, either from their not growing up in the city and/or their lack of ability to afford purchasing a home, that makes them uniquely affected by the urban crisis and puts mobility forward as a key strategy in pursuit of their life chances. It is how they react to this new urban crisis, namely through their mobility, that they designate themselves as a population worthy of study. This power of movement, the ability to (de)territorialize, either within global cities, or from choked global cities to other urban social structures across the globe for increased life chances and/or lower costs of living, designates this population, this assemblage of class fragments, as an important force of globalization in our contemporary age.
With the advent of Digital Taylorism (Brown, Lauder, & Ashton 2010; Schumpter 2015; Hardt & Negri 2017; Huws & Leys 2013; Irani 2014) and the emergence of remote work (Woldoff & Litchfield 2021), even the high-skill jobs that people flocked to cities for are undergoing a (de)territorialization. Labor reacts by itself undergoing a (de)territorialization. This is occurring in the section of young urban nomads who are able to grab these remote jobs, which allows them to choose where to live based on their own personal cultural preferences but also in the costs of living and reproduction. This is also occurring among those already living within global cities experiencing the heights of the new urban crisis who choose to move to different cities with lower costs of living but just as robust reproductive networks. This movement is even happening among the low wage reproductive labor which is being forced out of the global cities. This low-wage reproductive labor force sees their situation as relatively the same no matter where they live in terms of employment and wages but prefer places which match their cultural preferences and have lower costs of reproduction. They follow those higher-skill workers moving out of global cities to second and third tier cities, as these higher-skill workers demand similar types of social reproductive networks they grew accustomed to in the global cities, which creates a demand for this service labor force in these cities. Thus, the population I am investigating are those who utilize the power of movement in response to the urban crisis, to the concentration of employment within certain hard to access cities, but also as a fix to the urban crisis itself in search of lower costs of living and greater freedom in pursuing their own individualized social reproduction. These movements between urban spatial formations located around the globe create new relations of production and alters the urban social structures these individuals enter, thereby holding the power to transform the whole global system. vii Primarily the school, but also the party, the church, the army, etc.
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viii “When the accumulation of capital finds its content no longer simply in transforming the reproduction of the labour process, but above all in transforming the reproduction of labour-power, this provides the criterion for a new stage in capitalist development. This stage bears with it quite new forms of the wage relation. It alters the stability of equivalence relationships in exchange, and modifies the monetary system. The functioning of the law of value, therefore, the fundamental principle of commodity regulation, depends on the conditions in which the wage relation is generalized across the whole of society.” (Michael Aglietta, Pg. 23, The New Left Review I/110, July-August 1978) ix They were unleashed in the 1970’s in response to the failings of the regime of corporate capital, in which production and labor was heavily organized and disciplined by the firm and managers. The unbundling of the corporation was set loose as a reaction to the dual causes of overaccumulation and the rising struggles brought forward by May 1968, the latter represented by social movements fighting for inclusion in the state and society through the Keynesian welfare state. The latter situation saw the alliance of labor and capital, the particular relation of production arrived at near the end of Fordism, attacked and disciplined by the shareholder revolution seeking to free up profit and expenditure lost to the social compromise of labor with the state through welfare programs and social spending, a solution to free up capital circulation and intensify rates of exploitation and labor disciplining. This led to firms looking across the globe for cheap sources of disciplinable labor, leading to the unbundling of the firm, where the only sectors that remained in the west are those of the corporate headquarters and producer services. x The comparative advantage in the latter was attainable through the comparatively lower development of the consumption element in these “underdeveloped” areas, equaling lower wages at the same level of productivity that had been occurring in the west. xi This intensification of exploitation on the lower rungs of the production process kicked more capital up to the higher ends of the global commodity chain, heading up to the corporate headquarters and shareholders. More capital was accumulated through this circuit, which was then reinvested back in producer services which continued intensifying the process. xii “I argued that in many regards the homes of top level staff are an extension of the corporate platform…these [low- wage] tasks as the work of ‘maintaining a strategic infrastructure,’ one that included the households of top-level workers as these had to function like clockwork, with no room for little crises” (Sassen 2016, 100) xiii “Good weather may not have a sticker price, but we pay for it, just as we pay for a nicer car or a larger TV. The same is true for good public schools, low crime rates, and excellent local restaurants. Every attractive feature of a city ends up being capitalized, at least in part, into higher property values.” (Moretti, 2013, 166-167). xiv “As gentrification near the center results in higher land and housing prices, even for old, untransformed properties, districts further out become caught up in the momentum of gentrification” (Smith 2002, 442). xv The search for cheap accommodations drives these individuals out into the underlying region and hinterlands, incorporating previously distinct economic towns and regional areas which relied more on their own local economies than that of the city, into the economic sway of the global city. It becomes more and more connected to the region by the spread of the urban outwards in search of socially reproductive labor, as well as the homes and infrastructure of reproduction. Here we have the new relations of production corresponding to the regime of flexible accumulation being applied to previous socio-spatial formations, formally subsuming these older formations into its logic (Brenner & Schmid 2014). Even the labor of the command and control functions comes from these outlying regions and is being placed in these outlying regions. The hinterland becomes connected more and more to the fate of the global city and vice versa. “For it is no longer the center which organizes the urban hinterlands, but the hinterlands that determine what remains of the center” (Dear 2002). Before the global city was the metropole of its self-sufficient regional satellites. Now it is the metropole to global commodity chains, its local satellites dissolving and becoming absorbed by the (re)production network of the global city. The metropole itself, the very idea of a unified global city function dissolves, as the center core that organizes production itself dissolves into a scattered network of firms and reproductive networks sprinkled across the poly-nucleated region.
419 xvi In our framework, the new urban crisis can be understood as such: the new element of production relies on the labor of this newly configured unit of consumption performed by low-wage service workers. Their labor in the form of gentrification simultaneously serves both the circuit of accumulation via relative surplus value in their reproduction of the highly skilled, as well as that of accumulation by dispossession through its role in increasing real estate values extracted through the finance sector. The success of this labor in the element of consumption in the service of accumulation by dispossession complicates the continuation of the reproduction of the production element. On top of this, the labor of this consumption element also has to reproduce itself but is ill-equipped to do so via this very same consumption element due to the lower wages they receive from the high skill workers, and the success of their labor making it less and less accessible. They are forced out of the city to find lower consumption and rent costs, which makes their getting to the center of the city, where the consumption element is its most advanced, harder to do. This puts the whole consumption element in a precarious situation of reproduction, which could ultimately undermine the productive elements it is set on reproducing. xvii “To be precariatised is to be subject to pressures and experiences that lead to a precariat existence, of living in the present, without a secure identity or sense of development achieved through work and lifestyle. In this sense, part of the salariat is drifting into the precariat” (Standing 2011, 16-17)
Chapter 2 Notes xviii “Finally, and critical to the whole project, was what I refer to as the infrastructure to ensure maximum performance by high-income talent—the broad range of conditions enabling their work-lives. Prominently included in my analysis was a range of lowly rewarded tasks, ranging from low-level office to low-wage household work. I argued that in many regards the homes of top level staff are an extension of the corporate platform. The actual tasks were only part of the story. To get it out of the language of “low-wage jobs,” I described these tasks as the work of “maintaining a strategic infrastructure,” one that included the households of top-level workers as these had to function like clockwork, with no room for little crises. This interpretive move also fed into the notion of the Global City as a very specific space of production, and one enabling the organizing of its low-wage workers, such as janitors and household workers, precisely because it was about the maintenance of a strategic space.” (Sassen 2016, 100)” xix “Understanding the city as an arena for consumption, for entertainment, and for amenities—a city that competes for people as well as for firms, a city of symbols and experiences, the city at night—is a huge research opportunity for sociology, geography, and related disciplines.” (Florida 2005: 16) xx Like a Nomad Score (how digital nomads rate the city in terms of being a good location for the lifestyle), the current and year round patterns of weather, multiple calculations for the cost of living in that city, measures of friendliness and safety metrics xxi On each individual profile page, users can log all the travel they have completed or are planning in the future, cataloguing their travel over time, with the dates of said travel as well. This produces an individualized map of mobility on each user page, showing the user where they went. This data is then also used on each city page to show site users what users are in a given city at a particular time, intending to allow people to connect to each other in place if they are going to be in the same city at the same time. These lists at the bottom of each city page were taking this same trip level data and aggregating it by summing individual trips logged on each profile at the level of trips in general between cities. xxii https://levels.io/product-hunt-hacker-news-number-one/ xxiii Nomad List is an “Open Start Up” which means that they provide data on their site analytics so that other start- ups can see how the site and business model works and can adapt the model to their own uses. On the “Open Start Up” page of the site, they make available multiple measures, graphs and visualizations including information on the number of users, the number of page visits, the number of trips taken and planned, paying customers versus visitors, etc., all with changeable and customizable parameters. Using these built in tools, I was able to look at the historic user data from the inception of the website to the time of data collection, December 2017. 420
xxiv The data available on the number of users on the site by day from the time of earliest available data runs from September 2016 to December 2017, the point of data collection. In the just over a year period of available data, there was a total of 2,044,659 users, with a high of 150,302 users per day on 12/11/2017 and a low of 2,014 users per day on 10/22/2016. The data on the number of page views to the site by day from the time of earliest available data runs from August 2014 to December 2017, the point of data collection. In the just over three-year period of available data, there was a total of 29,563,609 page views, with a high of 599,992 page views per day on 06/15/2015 and a low of 629 page views per day on 06/29/2015. xxv Data available on the website spans the number of trips taken each month from July 2015 to December 2017. Number arrived at by summing up the number of trips taken by users each month of this date range. xxvi “There are currently 10 million to 100 million digital nomads in the world in 2020. This is based on the below assumptions: In the last year, Nomad List got 13,297,116 visits. About 25% of those visits are unique users, or 3,324,279 users. Not everyone who visits is already a nomad, probably most are wanna be nomads: but let's assume 25% are nomads or 831,070 people. If we assume Nomad List captures 10% of the entire demographic of digital nomads in a year (it's uncommon for companies to capture double digit amounts of a market), that'd mean there's 8,310,698 digital nomads. Nomad List mostly has an English-speaking Western audience though, which is only 20% of the world. Then again, most of the world is probably not in a position to go work remotely and travel (yet) due to differences in income. If we assume 40% of the world is though (or double the English speaking population), that means we can count 16,621,395 digital nomads. That's only self-described digital nomads though. If we make the definition broader to people who work remotely at least part of the year in a country different than their home country the number might double to 33,242,790 or triple to 49,864,185 digital nomads in the entire world. There's actual research that has surveyed this too. MBO Partners concluded "4.8 million independent workers currently describe themselves as digital nomads [in the United States]". The U.S. has a population of ~330 million people. That means 1.5% self-describes as a digital nomad. If we use that percentage for the entire world, we get ~100 million digital nomads. But most of the world isn't as developed as U.S. Even if we only add Europe: 741 million people * 1.5% = ~10 million digital nomads. Adding back U.S. to that gets us to close to ~15 million digital nomads. MBO's research is within the range of 10 million - 100 million above.” (nomadlist.com/help, Levels estimating number of digital nomads with assumptions that go into it.) xxvii MBO Partners found that 14 million traditional workers in the US were planning on becoming digital nomads over the next 2-3 years, with an additional 42 million responding they might in 2018, a total of 56 million aspirants in the United States alone. The term digital nomad has ceased to operate as a discrete category of worker or lifestyle practitioner and has become a broader aspirational identity and way of life pursued and idealized by a growing segment of the traditional workforce. The ability to see this way of life as attainable and actually claim this identity has been bolstered by the proliferation of remote work experiences amongst the traditional work force. “According to Gallup, 43 percent of Americans work remotely at least some of the time, and the share of these workers who work remotely 4-5 days per week increased from 24 percent in 2012 to 31 percent in 2017.” (MBO 2018). The expansion of remote work within the mainstream is growing, allowing for the possible decoupling of work from location for larger numbers of the global population than ever before. xxviii The GaWC Classifications index 374 Total Cities, of these 374 cities, 319 appear in the Digital Nomad City List. The Digital Nomad City List itself comprises 737 Cities, meaning 418 of the Digital Nomad Cities are not measured by the GPCI. The GPCI indexes 44 Total Cities, all of these 44 cities appear on the Digital Nomad City List. The Digital Nomad City List comprises 737 Cities, meaning 693 of the Digital Nomad Cities are not measured by the GPCI. The AT Kearney Rankings index 135 Total Cities, of these 135 cities, 118 appear on the Digital Nomad City List. The Digital Nomad City List itself comprises 737 Cities, meaning 619 of the Digital Nomad Cities are not measured by the AT Kearney Rankings. xxix The GaWC Classifications Index 3,480 Total Edges, of these 3,480 edges, _ appear in the Digital Nomad Edge List. The Digital Nomad Edge List itself comprises 9,731 edges, meaning _ edges are not measured by the GaWC Classifications.
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Chapter 3 Notes xxx nomadlist.com xxxi i.e., engaged in frequent mobility but domestically while engaging in temporary employment, or a remote worker who works at home and is not mobile, etc. xxxii i.e., from the side of the firm, of the objective conditions of production, the elements of production, consumption, exchange and administration xxxiii In each instance within these place-specific typologies, a variety of different relationships between place, employment, and self will play out, showing how in some instances travel to different places is done in support of work and labor processes, while in other instances work is done, and the time spent working is minimized, in order to support individual pursuit of travel and place to the end of maximizing self-exploration and actualization. xxxiv A business owner or contractor has to get their own clients, set up their own office, perform their own HR (or hire someone for the job), on top of perform the work that gets them paid, while travelling and finding places to live. A remote worker employed by a traditional firm only has to work the hours they agreed to, though these hours could be more or less than those of the contractor, while moving around their location. The backpacker can have more freedom in where they can choose to live and travel, but are limited in their nomadic employment options they will find wherever they go, and have less security in maintaining employment and income levels across their travels. xxxv The Flexjobs survey found that in comparison to their previous jobs, 31% of digital nomads made similar amounts of money, 18% made more money as a digital nomad than when they worked traditionally and 46% made less money as a digital nomad. xxxvi The GPCI evaluates cities along the dimensions of these 6 urban functions with each function comprised of multiple indicators. There are 70 indicators total that are used to determine city power ranking in the GPCI. “The average indicator scores of the indicator groups are combined to create the function-specific rankings, and then the comprehensive ranking is created from the total scores of the function-specific rankings.” The urban “Economy” function is made up of indicators measuring Market Size, Market Attractiveness, Economic Vitality, Human Capital, Business Environment and Ease of doing Business. The urban “Research and Development” function is made up of indicators measuring Academic Resources, Research Background, and Innovation. The urban “Cultural Interaction” function is made up of indicators measuring Trendsetting Potential, Cultural Resources, Facilities for Visitors, Attractiveness to Visitors, and International Interaction. The urban “Liveability” function is made up of indicators measuring Working Environment, Cost of Living, Security & Safety, Well-Being and Ease of Living. The urban “Environment” function is made up of indicators measuring Ecology, Air Quality, and Natural Environment. The urban “Accessibility” function is made up of indicators measuring a city’s International Transportation Network, Transportation infrastructure, Inner-City Transportation Services, and Traffic Convenience. Furthermore, these six functions carry their own Function-Specific Ranking, as well as make up the greater Index Score City Ranking. xxxvii “The Actor-Specific Ranking evaluates cities from the viewpoints of 5 actors: Manager, Researcher, Artist, Visitor, and Resident. Each actor’s needs are established first by determining the components they seek in global cities. Each city’s actor-specific score is then calculated by selecting from among the 70 indicators those that correspond to each actor’s specific needs.” - GPCI Summary Report 2018. xxxviii With Bangkok being the number one Digital Nomad City overall, it suggests that touristic styles of mobility, and the visitor actors that engage in them, make up a large sub-section of digital nomad trajectories as opposed to say purely managers, researchers, and more typically creative class workers in particular.
422 xxxix A manager can become a visitor when they embark on a tourist trip to a new location and look at the city through the lens of a visitor, but also apply the lens of their manager employment to ascertain whether they can get a job there, while also looking at it as a potential resident considering it for a further investment in mobility. xl These typologies are, by the very nature of the subject being investigated, partial and incomplete, with the populations being thrown into mobility by the new urban crisis constantly changing, converging, and fracturing as they engage in new bouts of mobility and collide with other members of these shifting and fluid populations.
Chapter 4 Notes xli Estrada, William David (2009). The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space. University of Texas Press. pp. 15–50. xlii Leffingwell, Randy; Worden, Alastair (November 4, 2005). California missions and presidios. Voyageur Press. pp. 43–44. ISBN 978-0-89658-492-1. xliii "Settlement of Los Angeles". Los Angeles Almanac. Retrieved September 2, 2018. xliv Guinn, James Miller (1902). Historical and biographical record of southern California: containing a history of southern California from its earliest settlement to the opening year of the twentieth century. Chapman pub. co. p. 63. xlv Mulholland, Catherine (2002). William Mulholland and the Rise of Los Angeles. University of California Press. p. 15. xlvi Kipen, David (2011). Los Angeles in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City of Angels. University of California Press. pp. 45–46. xlvii "Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1900". United States Census Bureau. June 15, 1998. xlviii Kipen, David (2011). Los Angeles in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City of Angels. University of California Press. pp. 45–46. xlix "The Los Angeles Aqueduct and the Owens and Mono Lakes (MONO Case)". American University. Archived from the original on January 9, 2015. l Buntin, John (April 6, 2010). L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City. Random House Digital, Inc. p. 18 li This Utopic/Dystopic binary remains a cornerstone of historical and contemporary representations of the city caught up in the indigenous genre of film noire in the works of Raymond Chandler and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, with its corporate graft and brutality depicted in the muck-raking and reformist exposés of the oil industry by Upton Sinclair in Oil up to the Rampart Scandal in the 1990s showing the depths of police and government corruption infecting the city. lii Parker, Dana T. Building Victory: Aircraft Manufacturing in the Los Angeles Area in World War II, Cypress, CA, 2013. liii Carp, David (June 5, 2019). "Everything you didn't even know you wanted to know about celery". Los Angeles Times. liv https://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/world2012t.html lv https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/data/tables.2019.html lvi https://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/maps-data/data/gazetteer/2019_Gazetteer/2019_gaz_place_06.txt lvii http://www.dof.ca.gov/Forecasting/Demographics/Estimates/e-1/documents/E-1_2017PressRelease.pdf lviii http://www.city-data.com/us-cities/The-West/Los-Angeles-Economy.html lix https://web.archive.org/web/20170611000617/http://www.longfinance.net/images/gfci/gfci_21.pdf lx "Table 3.1. GDP & Personal Income". U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. 2018. lxi http://www.laalmanac.com/economy/ec37.php lxii https://constructioncoverage.com/research/cities-with-the-largest-increase-in-home-prices-since-2010 lxiii https://www.zumper.com/blog/rental-price-data/ lxiv https://www.dailynews.com/2019/07/05/los-angeles-ranked-the-nations-5th-most-expensive-city-for-renters/ lxv https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2019-12-27/l-a-rent-rose-65-percent-over-the-last-decade- study-shows https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/market-snapshots/renting-america-housing-changed-past- decade/ lxvi https://www.dailynews.com/2019/07/05/los-angeles-ranked-the-nations-5th-most-expensive-city-for-renters/
423 lxvii https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2019-12-27/l-a-rent-rose-65-percent-over-the-last-decade- study-shows https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/market-snapshots/renting-america-housing-changed-past- decade/ lxviii From PodShare Website, the Venice Beach page
Chapter 5 Notes lxix "Dharamsāla lies on a spur of the Dhola Dhār, 16 miles north-east of Kāngra, in the midst of wild and picturesque scenery. It originally formed a subsidiary cantonment for the troops stationed at Kāngra, and was first occupied as a station in 1849, when a site was required for a cantonment to accommodate a Native regiment which was being raised in the District. A site was found upon the slopes of the Dhola Dhār, in a plot of waste land, upon which stood an old Hindu resthouse, or dharmsāla, whence the name adopted for the new cantonment. The civil authorities, following the example of the regimental officers, and attracted by the advantages of climate and scenery, built themselves houses in the neighbourhood of the cantonment; and in 1855 the new station was formally recognised as the headquarters of the [Kāngra] District." – (Imperial Gazetteer of India) lxx “In 1855, Dharamsala had only two major areas where civilians settled in: McLeod Ganj, named after Lieutenant Governor of Punjab 'David McLeod', and Forsyth Ganj, named after a Divisional Commissioner. Lord Elgin, the British Viceroy of India (1862-63) fell in love with the natural beauty of Dharamsala because of its likeness with Scotland, his home. A Legend has it that Lord Elgin liked Dharamsala so much that he had sent a proposal to the British monarch to make Dharamsala the summer capital of India. However, the proposal was ignored. By 1904, Forsyth Ganj and McLeod Ganj had become nerve centers of trade, business and official work of Kangra District” (mcllo.com, Dharamsala Info Page) lxxi Craig, Mary (1999). Tears of Blood: a Cry for Tibet. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint. p. 142. lxxii But all this changed when the government of India decided to grant political asylum to the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatsho, in 1959. In 1960, he was allowed to make McLeod Ganj his headquarters . After his arrival, trade, commerce and tourism picked up afresh. Because with the Dalai Lama came thousands of Tibetan refugees, who gradually settled in McLeod Ganj. During the last three decades, The Tibetans have built many religious, educational and cultural institutions in and around McLeod Ganj, which has helped in preservation of their culture. This has been a keen area of interest for the people around the world and as a result they flock at Dharamsala at various times. (mcllo.com, Dharamsala Info Page) lxxiii Dharamsala Municipal Corporation Census https://web.archive.org/web/20160427090803/http://mcdharamshala.in/about-us/ lxxiv Ives also tells me more about the Brits he met, they are academics of some sort, some getting PhDs others being research assistants, out here doing research of different varieties. One is working on changing curricula in schools in terms of technology integration and working farming into schools and stuff. Another two are working on interview based research about women in the area who have been possessed, looking at gender dynamics in relation to this phenomena. It is interesting that this small area has so many academics, though it also has a number of non-profits all located here around the park, with Ives telling me of a women center right down the road. there’s also the rural trust, nishta a more development oriented institution, the animal rescue, schools, and children and family center and what not. lxxv We talk about the alternative network of cities in the US which he identifies, the places he says that you need to go as opposed to the massified cities, like Denver, Berkeley, Sante Fe, Austin, Seattle, both Portlands, Burlington, etc.
424 lxxvi I asked him what he was up to, what he had been working on. He said he had been learning how to do machine learning and AI in python. I asked him how he was learning it, tutorials? He said yes tutorials. He said he normally finds them on youtube, or basecamp, or just torrents the. He says that they just torrent here in India and then asked if they do that in the US, whether people were essentially too sheepish or morally against torrenting there.
Conclusion Notes lxxvii https://m.economictimes.com/multimedia/jobs/the-gig-factor-new-tools-and-platforms-spring-up-to-aid-laid- off-workers-and-nervous-companies/articleshow/78081018.cms lxxviii Erik Brynjolfsson, John J. Horton, Adam Ozimek, Daniel Rock, Garima Sharma, and Hong Yi Tu Ye, “COVID-19 and remote work: an early look at US data,” Working Paper 27344 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2020), https://www.nber.org/papers/w27344. lxxix Jonathan I. Dingel and Brent Neiman, “How many jobs can be done at home?” white paper (Chicago, IL: Becker Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago, April 2020), https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp- content/uploads/BFI_White-Paper_Dingel_Neiman_3.2020.pdf. lxxx https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R46554.pdf lxxxi https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/08/20/jobless-claims-574-million-americans-have-sought- unemployment-benefits-since-mid-marchover-1-million-people-filed-last-week/?sh=1b09da2e6d59 lxxxii https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2020/article/ability-to-work-from-home.htm lxxxiii https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/05/06/telework-may-save-u-s-jobs-in-covid-19-downturn- especially-among-college-graduates/ lxxxiv https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/30/jobless-claims-industry/ lxxxv https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2020/article/ability-to-work-from-home.htm lxxxvi https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201215005287/en/Upwork-Study-Finds-22-of-American- Workforce-Will-Be-Remote-by-2025 lxxxvii https://www.hrdive.com/news/gartner-over-80-of-company-leaders-plan-to-permit-remote-work-after- pande/581744/ lxxxviii https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/survey-productivity-balance-improve-during-pandemic-remote-work/ lxxxix https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/remote-work-statistics/ xc https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/robinryan/2020/04/07/laid-off-many-boomers-are-headed- into-forced-retirement/amp/ xci https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/02/16/older-workers-are-being-pushed-out-of-the-job- market/?sh=1390b72c8e91 xcii https://onezero.medium.com/what-facebooks-remote-work-policy-means-for-the-future-of-tech-salaries- everywhere-edf859226b62 xciii https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/21/21265780/facebook-remote-work-mark-zuckerberg-interview-wfh xciv https://www.fastcompany.com/90540288/location-based-salaries-will-kill-your-startups-culture
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xcv https://amp.economist.com/business/2020/12/03/how-the-pandemic-is-forcing-managers-to-work- harder?__twitter_impression=true xcvi https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/2020/general-schedule/ xcvii https://www.washingtonpost.com/road-to-recovery/2021/02/17/unemployed-workers-retraining/ xcviii https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/02/10/unemployed-americans-are-feeling-the-emotional-strain-of- job-loss-most-have-considered-changing-occupations/ xcix https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/nyregion/coronavirus-work-from-home.html?smid=fb- nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR1Ms3QAf3rLf_4gpSn6BhcC1WzSWIW4jncq2V0b48aZIrdvEa3LNjmk9gI c https://www.mobs-lab.org/uploads/6/7/8/7/6787877/covid19mobility_report2.pdf ci https://www.travelpulse.com/news/airlines/iatas-final-numbers-show-66-percent-drop-in-airline-passengers-in- 2020.html#:~:text=The%20International%20Civil%20Aviation%20Organization,around%204.5%20billion%20in% 202019. cii https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/remote-work-and-real-estate-trends/ ciii https://www.npr.org/2020/07/08/887585383/new-yorkers-look-to-suburbs-and-beyond-other-city-dwellers-may- be-next civ https://www.businessinsider.com/twice-as-many-san-francisco-homes-for-sale-pandemic-2020-8 cv https://www.zillow.com/research/2020-urb-suburb-market-report-27712/ cvi http://zillow.mediaroom.com/2020-09-08-Remote-Work-Could-Open-Homeownership-to-Nearly-Two-Million- Renter-Households cvii https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/remote-work-and-real-estate-trends/ cviii https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2021/02/11/with-techies-fleeing-the-coasts-americas-heartland-has- a-shot-at-economic-revival-if-we-save-its-higher-education-institutions/?fbclid=IwAR3Zlm5GfG_Qp- vhDJY_eCmcL9eIQzv5XRUPkcMqUdiC5z02QjYN5aE0vjE
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