"Global Natives" and the future of borderless work
Interview with journalist and digital nomad expert, Lauren Razavi
I met Lauren Razavi earlier this year through a mutual friend who said we’d have a lot to talk about - and he was right. She had just finished writing a book about digital nomads and we spent the evening discussing the writing life.
Six months later, the subject of digital nomads in Mexico City became a full-blown controversy. And as I composed my own thoughts on the matter, I suddenly remembered our chance encounter and her upcoming book.
Global Natives: The New Frontiers of Work, Travel, and Innovation could not be more timely. Unlike most writing about digital nomads, it’s not a “how-to” manual. It’s a book of big ideas that covers the past, present, and potential of borderless work.
If you enjoy what I’ve been writing about globalization and gentrification in Mexico City, you’re going to love Lauren’s book. I downloaded and devoured her book in a single sitting. I instantly knew I had to ask for an interview to drill into some of my favorite aspects of this evolving topic.
Below is a condensed version of our discussion. If you want to read the whole book, click this link for 20% off your purchase.
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MA: Why write this book?
LR: I was asked to write a book on “how to be a digital nomad” in 2018, but I didn’t want to just tell people how to adopt the lifestyle. I wanted to write about the big ideas. What digital nomads represent as a movement.
I left my tech job to write the book at the end of 2019. Then COVID happened, remote work exploded, and suddenly this subject was very relevant to the mainstream conversation.
Countries launched digital nomad visas and the media was going crazy over all these new approaches to global mobility. I finished writing the book earlier this year and I decided to publish it on Holloway so it could get to market as soon as possible.
MA: Early in the book you mention going to a co-working space in Bali called Hubud, which is widely recognized as the first proper “digital nomad hub,” You say it “wasn't a place for tourists or locals. It was a place for a third kind of people: globals.” What are globals and are they different than digital nomads?
LR: When I say “global” I’m referring to a global culture that is reinforced by the Internet. Most nomads will be globals, but globals also include expats, third culture kids, or anyone who has cross-border relationships with people and places. Now we all consume the same material online and this creates a shared global consciousness. When I refer to “a space for globals,” it's the physical manifestation of online culture. It makes me think of questions raised in the TED Talk by Taiye Selasi called Don’t ask where I’m from, ask me where I’m local. What does it mean to be from somewhere in the Internet era? Are we really from just one place?
MA: That’s one of my favorite TED Talks as well. And I also love your summary of the roots of modern nomadism. I’m living near Mexico City’s Roma Norte neighborhood, which was a haunt of the Beatniks writers in the 1950s - William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg. How does this new wave of nomads differs from earlier migrations?
LR: In the past, it was primarily artists who were able to do their work from anywhere and then drop into a hub city like London or New York to meet with agents, publishers, or galleries. Now remote work has become completely mainstream. It's no longer a small subculture - it's actually the majority of knowledge workers today.
MA: In the book, you cite a 2014 study that found that the average digital nomad was not rich - the average income was $1,000/mo, a figure skewed by a few high earners. That now seems really low. How has the shift to remote work on the corporate level changed the face of the average digital nomad - and their impact on local economies?
LR: That figure is from a Harvard study, one of the first on digital nomads. It surveyed a huge group of people, most of who didn’t have a remote job but perhaps saved up a little bit of money, hopped on a flight to Bali, and thought, “Okay, now how do I earn a living?” Many ended up selling online courses on how to become a digital nomad, which became like a multi-level marketing scheme. There was a lot of that in the early days… Today, the majority of knowledge worker roles across industries can be done remotely. People no longer have to figure the lifestyle out on their own. Many want to travel to have a vacation while working. This includes people making more than $100,000 per year who have opted out of paying rent in San Francisco or London to\move around the world, experience different cultures, and perform “geographic arbitrage” - earning dollars or pounds while living in a lower cost of living place to afford a better lifestyle than back home.
MA: It's almost like the difference between backpacking and traveling by cruise ship, popping in and out of cultures without interacting with the local community in a meaningful way. Cruise ships have destroyed fragile cities like Venice or even Barcelona because of the mass influx of people into small spaces. Perhaps this analogous for what’s happening in Mexico City, Lisbon and Bali. But why is the gentrification controversy is focused on Mexico City rather than elsewhere?
LR: It's not happening as much in Lisbon because Portuguese have the “passport power” to be able to choose from options of where they can live and work. Portugal actually has one of the most powerful passports in the world. And after the 2008 financial crisis, many young people left to work abroad. So they have a mobile workforce with the privilege of moving countries with few immigration restrictions.
In Mexico, the situation is very different. Mexican passports are not as powerful. In theory, people are getting priced out of Mexico City should be able move to small-town America, which is in need of rejuvenation. But I don't need to explain how differently Mexicans and Americans experience crossing their shared border.
The structure of the global system is designed to keep people unequal based on nothing but where they were born, which is a real lottery. You can try to improve your profession and lift yourself up as best you can, but you can never change where you were born and thus, the passport you hold.
Unless, of course, you’re wealthy enough to buy yourself a better citizenship.
MA: Do you think the gentrification debate is an inevitable part of this new chapter of digital nomadism? Or are there ways we can use it to benefit local economies?
LR: I think it's important to note that gentrification is not a ‘nomad problem’ - but nomads can exacerbate it. Gentrification is happening all over the world. The cost of living crisis is happening globally. People keep telling me, “I might become a digital nomad because it's getting so expensive to live in the U.S. or Europe.” The cost of living crisis is also a nomad cost of living crisis.
Pieter Levels, the founder of Nomad List, was recently tweeting about how in Bali the average rent is 3,000 us dollars per month. Everything is getting more expensive everywhere, and nomads are not only exacerbating this problem, but they're also the product of it. They're being priced out of their own locations, just as residents of Mexico City are upset about property prices going up.
A lot of nomads come from cities like New York, London, Paris or Amsterdam, where the cost of living is out of reach even for people earning more than a $100,000 per year.
MA: What makes a “nomad hub” popular beyond the essentials of strong internet, a favorable exchange rate, and a comfortable lifestyle? What’s that “X-Factor” that makes cities like Mexico or Lisbon effortlessly popular while other places have to entice remote workers with financial incentives?
LR: It’s about the vibrancy of a place. Obviously, you do need Internet, short-term rentals to be available, and for them to be of a reasonably high standard. But then you also need the place to actually be fun - and ideally not polluted or dangerous. If you get those essentials right, a lot of people come to try the place, tell their friends about it, and this creates a buzz. People used to move to New York City to “make it.” Now they ask, “Where am I going to move to meet cutting-edge people living different lifestyles and experimenting with how to shape an unconventional life and a relationship with place?” This eventually makes a nomad hub.
MA: I am currently writing about how I think Mexico City is uniquely positioned to attract and retain these knowledge workers more than other cities. Do you agree or will Mexico City eventually be replaced by somewhere trendier or cheaper?
LR: Smart policy can deliver positive outcomes. I’m the Executive Director of Plumia, which has a mission of building an Internet country for digital nomads by trying to create, win-wins for the locals and nomads. There are a few ways to do this, but it does require good policy.
In Mexico, during the pandemic they enacted policies that they made it very easy nomads to base themselves in Mexico on a longer-term basis. That policy is fine if you actually have a strategy for how your government and your people will benefit from that situation - i.e. via “Nomad Taxes.” That is, do you want nomads to come in as non-tax residents that just spend their money locally or do you need them to be tax residents, so that you're actually able to take their income taxes, too?
There are all kinds of approaches governments can take. But without the right policies you end up in the situation of Mexico, where the government is encouraging knowledge workers to come and base themselves there because they will spend in the local economy. And while that’s a good thing, the inequality in power and rights between locals and nomads is what gives rise to the term “colonizers.”
For example, the majority of U.S. tech jobs can now be done remotely. But in order to be hired, you must have the right to work in the US. So while you might ask, “If the residents of Mexico City are so upset, why don't they just get remote jobs so they can afford the rising cost of rent?”
They can’t because of these restrictions - and this is not actually a government thing. Obviously, taxes have to do with residency. But this is a problem in the private sector.
Companies are worried about not complying with regulations, so they err on the side of caution and mandate that workers have to be able to come into the office. But the internet should empower everyone to benefit from this incredible global, infrastructure. And one of the big questions is how to level the global playing field so that everyone has access to the same opportunities, regardless where they were born.
And I believe that all of us who enjoy the privilege of traveling to different cultures should be championing this idea of equality of opportunity in a borderless world.
MA: It sounds like a great idea - but also a political non-starter in the United States, given the controversy around immigration and offshoring of jobs. I’m thinking of the 90s and NAFTA, when presidential candidate Ross Perot warned of the “giant sucking sound” of jobs moving south to Mexico - and that was for manufacturing jobs. Trump largely ran on this grievance. And I could imagine a similar controversy around knowledge workers. Do you agree with that, or is it more complex?
LR: It's definitely more complex. In reality, these American companies are already outsourcing down South. It's just that the people receiving those outsourced jobs are earning much less than if they were working directly for that company. The choice is not between employing domestically or globally. It’s a matter of the model.
American companies are concerned about two things: the cost and the the quality of talent. But the best person for a job is not necessary from the United States. She might be from Mexico, Bosnia, or Indonesia. If you want the best talent in the world, you have to look across the whole world and not just in the San Francisco Bay Area.
MA: Your book addresses something that has been on my mind for years - how globalization always moves faster than political institutions. We've seen how corporations sidestep taxation in developed economies while manufacturing wherever it's cheapest, always one step ahead of regulation. Now the system just seems broken. I wonder whether the remote work revolution is precipitating the breakdown of the nation-state and the social contract between citizens and their governments. How does our notion of citizenship need to change in order to address the problems and opportunities of this new era?
LR: The nation-state is no longer the best way to organize societies. In my work at Plumia, we conceptualize the future as being about a global layer and a local layer, with the national layer becoming less important.
Municipal and regional authorities need to be involved in the on-the-ground stuff, i.e. making sure that a city can function through regulations for traffic and investment in hospitals, et cetera.
But the national layer is mostly about centralizing power away from the people they're actually representing. It's not like we need to dismantle it or destroy it. But ever since the early 20th century, it’s become less relevant. And that will continue as a trend.
At Plumia we are building the global layer by thinking about how we can use the technology available to us today to achieve a seamless citizenship experience that feels like Airbnb, Uber, and other services we are so used to as consumers. It’s about having a system you can interact with - very efficient, but also just more relevant to how we're all living our lives.
Citizenship needs to change from being something thrust upon you at birth into citizenship as a service. An opt-in system that anybody can access in exchange for a passport, health insurance, or a retirement product, like a pension.
All of these things can be provided not as in the traditional social contract between a citizen and a country, but as a quality service at a much lower cost than the 40% of your income that you would be paying in taxation in many European countries.
MA: What advice would you give to somebody who was just about to start off on their first adventure and has never been a digital nomad or remote worker?
LR: To think about identity and belonging in new ways and engage with what's possible in the world right now. Socially and culturally, we all need to consider how we relate to the world and how we translate traditional notions of citizenship into a global contract.
For instance, what does patriotism look like as a global citizen? And how does being a good global citizen compare to being a good citizen of a traditional country?
These are the questions we all need to think about so we can elevate this early global culture into something with its own identity and manifesto for the world.
MA: In this newsletter’s book club, we recently read In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong by Amin Maalouf, which speaks about the idea of vertical versus horizontal identities. You're advocating for choosing a “horizontal identity” of becoming “globals” versus “vertical” identities based upon ethnicities or national histories. But aren’t you worried there will be a backlash against this new world?
LR: Whenever a person or identity is threatened, it will lash out against the perceived threat. That's why our work at Plumia aims to ensure that digital nomads have a voice with governments so we can help pave the way towards productive outcomes for all.
We're trying to be the bridge builders between what exists today and where we think all of this is going. Because if governments don't understand what nomads are, they may respond to concerns by trying to outlaw or restrict nomadism in the name of management.
Some backlash is inevitable, but we've had a lot of really productive conversations with governments. There's a huge willingness to understand the benefits of nomads as well as how to guard against some of the worst outcomes.
So while Mexico City is experiencing this backlash, a lot of Mediterranean countries (Italy and Spain in particular) they have launched remote work incentives to ensure people are incentivized to go out to rural areas in need of revitalization rather than moving to the major cities that already have affordability issues.
With the right policies, governments can create win-win solutions that revitalizes areas, protects local lifestyles, increases access to new consumer services, and enables digital nomads to enjoy a diversity of experiences unique to these rural locations.
With good policy and smart regulation that considers both nomads and locals, you can really smooth this transition and avoid some of the negative outcomes. But it takes quite a while for governments to catch on. And at Plumia, we’re trying to help governments understand the opportunities sooner rather than later.
MA: You're obviously thinking about very big ideas and there's a lot more for all of us to consider. Thank you so much for this conversation and I look forward to sharing your book with the rest of my audience. Safe travels!
To learn more, either download Lauren’s book or subscribe to her newsletter. And if you are thinking of experimenting with remote work, check out the Nomad Insurance plans offered by Safety Wing, the parent company of Lauren’s company Plumia.
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Pax vobiscum,
Marko
omgoodness, did you feel the earthquake are you and your friend ok????
9/19/2022
Phenomenal interview. Love imagining the future and what is possible. Thank you Marko!