This week’s readings prompted me to think about one of the most visible contemporary expressions of transnational life, which would be digital nomads. Having travelled to Bali and noticing the place filled with expats living ‘borderless’ lives on Instagram (working from beach cafes, moving freely between countries, or just seemingly embodying the cosmopolitan future that global history once promised). Yet, as Green reminds us, transnationalism is not as easy as it looks. She urges historians to focus on the difficulties embedded in the lived practice of transnationalism, warning against overly celebratory narratives of mobility. Applying her critique to digital nomads thus complicates their image as global citizens. Their monbility depends on highly-ranked passports, visa regimes desgined to attract westerners and their income, a stable internet infrastructure, and, above all, the lingua franca – English. Their transnationalism is thus structurally enabled rather than simbly being agency.
The EUI Global History Seminar Group similarly critiques the pwoer structures embedded in global history itself. They highlight how English dominance and Anglophone institutions shape what counts as ‘global’. Likewise, digital nomadism seems to mirror this pattern. Many nomad hubs operate primarily in English/are forced to change and operate to cater towards these Westerners. Much like global history’s centres, these enclaves reproduce hierarchies instead of dissolving them.
Adelman’s reflection on the rise and retreat of globalist optimism also caught my interest. The early 2000s celebrated integration and comopolitanism. Digital nomads might appear to be the continuation of this moment (the human embodiment of border-crossing enthusiasm), but Adelman asks who is left out of global narratives. In places like Bali, rising rents and service economies catered towards foreign remote workers raise questions about uneven integration. Hence, mobility for some may mean structural fragility for others.
In this sense, digital nomads resemble eariler figures of elite mobility, such as those mentioned in Green’s article – Americans in 1920s Paris. Thus, transnational life has for a long time (always?) been easier for some than others.
If global history sought to dethrone the nation-state as the central unit of analysis, digital nomadism suggests that borders still matter, revealing how deeply mobility is structured by nationality, currency, language, and global inequality. Perhaps, then, this week’s readings might suggest borders are still very much relevant, just differently for different people.