Travel Bloggers as ‘Digital Nomads’–How Can Understanding This Lifestyle Migration Help us to Think About the Future of Work,Migration and Technology?

Abstract

This paper draws on qualitative, empirical research conducted with nineteen British travel bloggers as distinctive examples of digital nomads, involved in unique forms of lifestyle migration. The paper analyses travel bloggers’ working lives, paying attention to how travel bloggers own migration geographies inextricably entwine with their digital labour. The paper makes three key contributions to the literature on digital nomadism and lifestyle migration. Firstly, the paper highlights how travel bloggers personal migration geographies are a key resource in travel bloggers commodified performances of digital nomadism to their online audiences. Secondly, that travel bloggers encounter ‘frictions’ associated with this intersection of migration geographies and digital work, namely issues of overwork, mental health struggles and instability of digital platforms. Thirdly, that although travel bloggers may understand themselves as lifestyle migrants, there is limited reflection on how, their own, privileged migration geographies may impact upon other migrants or communities. Within the conclusion, these reflections are used to ponder what travel blogging as a form of lifestyle migration may allow us to consider about the future of work, digital technologies and migration.

Keywords

digital nomadism digital technologies lifestyle migration

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