Digital nomadism has evolved into a global trend. Photo: TUCHONG

Over the past two decades, digital nomadism, a lifestyle freed from geographical constraints by high-speed wireless networks and powerful mobile devices, has evolved into a global trend and is increasingly popular among young people in China. While the academic community attempts to further conceptualize digital nomadism, current discussions are inadequate.

Firstly, conceptualizing digital nomads as a homogeneous group tends to obscure their internal heterogeneity and national differences. The emergence of digital nomadism in China is likely to be ascribed to globalization, with its particularity being overlooked. Secondly, while the forms of labor, community support, and social interactions of digital nomads are widely discussed, research on digital nomads as an emotional community is lacking, which limits the understanding of this group to representational, symbolic, and functional levels. Thirdly, existing studies emphasize the digitalization of work, flexibility of location, and free lifestyle of digital nomads, while overlooking the intrinsic motivations and external social factors driving individuals to engage in this lifestyle, leaving the “locality” of China’s digital nomad research unaddressed and failing to connect it with more forward-looking social potential.

In response, the author conducted research by collecting empirical data from both online and offline sources, including notes from a three-month field study at the DNA (Digital Nomad Anji) community in Zhejiang Province, in-depth interviews with over 20 digital nomads and community managers, and over six months of random browsing through news releases and manager interviews published by official digital nomad community accounts, as well as personal content posted by digital nomads on social media platforms such as WeChat, Xiaohongshu, TikTok, and Bilibili.

The term “Digital nomad” became a buzzword across Chinese social media in 2023, indicating a growing interest among young people and the appeal of a subcultural lifestyle and its associated social capital and resources. In addition to external factors, digital nomadism serves as an “escape plan” powered by an inner drive, and results from reflexive identity. According to sociologists Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck, and Scott Lash, in the stage of reflexive modernization, identity is no longer granted but actively constructed by individuals; it is diverse, fluid, changing, and ambiguous rather than singular and stable; it is constructed through individual consumption and chosen by individuals from a vast array of possibilities offered by society. Self-identity has become a “reflexive, organized endeavour,” and everyone must produce, perform, and collect their life experiences on their own.

Despite the risks of career instability and an uncertain future, for some young persons, digital nomadism embodies their imagination of an unfettered life where they escape from the “self” trapped in mundane realities, and even the “self” they dislike. Reflection upon self-identity and self-confrontation manifest to varying degrees in every interviewee. Giddens attributes the crisis of modernity to the spatiotemporal disconnection caused by globalization. Time is standardized, local contexts retreat, and everything is drawn into uncertainty by reconstructed, blurred spatiotemporal spans. The most remarkable characteristics of reflexive modernization is workers’ gradual loss of control over their work hours and location, which turns them into mere components of industrial assembly lines, online platforms, and algorithms.

In this sense, digital nomadism can be considered a “self-confrontation” plan and an experimental exploration of self-identity devised by individuals examining their relationship with standardized work and boring everyday life amid the crisis of modernity in a risk society. The flexible work hours, decentralization of workplaces, and liquid lifestyle of digital nomads foreshadow the decline of traditional social relations, institutional transcendence, and the rise of individualized identities. Identity increasingly becomes a matter of choice. Traditional, consistent identities no longer exist, while fluid, heterogenous, and diverse identities converge in a single individual.

All digital work provided by society is reorganized by digital nomads in a self-centered fashion. Most members of the DNA community have more than one job. Almost all interviewees agree that their actions are centered on themselves, and they must become the planner of their own life course, labor skills, values, and intimate relationships to explore the boundaries of their potential while also assuming all responsibility for their decisions.

On one hand, digital nomadism as a symbol is generally recognized and embraced by digital nomads. Their nomadic nature implies the notion of “on the road,” which represents a challenge to outdated conventions and norms. It also represents a thirst for the unknown and a pioneering spirit arising from the willingness and ability to engage in continuous adventure. On the other hand, the collective identity of digital nomads strengthens the connections between them.

As the fabric of global integration unravels and the Fourth Industrial Revolution severely impacts traditional modes of work and lifestyles, individuals actively or passively “liberated” are also seeking a neotribalist collective life, along with the support of emotional communities. Digital nomadism, as a cultural phenomenon, suggests that notable changes are emerging in traditional social structures such work-life, individual-collective, urban-rural, and local-global relations.

Ma Zhonghong is a professor from the School of Communication at Soochow University.

Edited by WANG YOURAN