Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the Digital Normads' work- and lifestyle. It asks for motives, pictures, ideologies and social processes of power standing behind the decision for such a work- and lifestyle, as well as for interdependencies with the structural changes of the labor market.

Paper long abstract:

Digital Transformation and globalization lead in some fields to a worldwide power shift from nation states to global markets and in digital spaces. New business models like Airbnb, Uber or Crowdworking undermine governmental labor market regulations and social security systems. Concerned politicians, economists and scientists are warning of a growing number of day laborers and demanding for more state regulation, while many of the parties concerned call for deregulation.

This trend becomes particularly clear when looking at Digital Nomads, self-employed, entrepreneurs or employees, mostly from the academic sector, who generate their income using digital technologies and lead or aim at a location-independent lifestyle. They stand for the rater glamorous, self-determined and flexible labor force in the knowledge-intensive service sector. But in their daily working-life they are also confronted with precarious working conditions. It is important to note that Digital Nomadism is a medial construction and an attribution as well as a self-description and a model for some of the knowledge workers. Practices often follow the discourse and the pictures in the media, and vice versa. Due to these interdependencies, I follow a traditional ethnographical approach and investigate the macro level as well as the micro level.

Explaining the raise of flexible forms of work only with the structural changes of the labor market would neglect the self-determined decisions of the actors. The active struggling for and the idealization of flexible work only becomes explainable when also looking at the impact of ideological pictures and discourses about freedom.