Thesis title: Laptop by the beach: Digital Nomadism and the reproduction of Global Inequality in the age of remote work
This doctoral thesis examines the phenomenon of digital nomadism and analyzes its socio
economic, cultural, and political implications beyond idealized representations. While digital
nomadism is often portrayed as a liberating lifestyle enabled by digital technologies and the
flexibilization of work, this study argues that it simultaneously reproduces systems of global
inequality, spatial privilege, and postcolonial power asymmetries. Using a mixed-methods
research design that incorporates surveys, semi-structured interviews, and network-based
fieldwork, the study examines the motivations, demographic profiles, economic practices, and
narratives of digital nomads. Given the complexity of the phenomenon, the study develops an
integrated theoretical framework that combines Domenico De Masi's theory of creative leisure,
Zygmunt Bauman's liquid modernity, and postcolonial critique. The paper introduces the
concept of "privileged precarity" to conceptualize the paradox of digital nomads working under
precarious economic conditions while benefiting from systemic advantages such as Western
citizenship, digital literacy, and class privilege. The second theoretical contribution, "digital
coloniality," describes how digital technologies disrupt and reproduce colonial patterns of
mobility and exploitation through infrastructural selectivity, platform mediation, and
technological enclosure. The research critically examines digital nomadism as a socio
economic phenomenon situated at the intersection of technology-mediated professionalization
of labor, accelerated mobility of privileged populations, and global dynamics of inequality. It
analyzes how digital nomadism is reproduced within the historical framework of unequal
development that characterizes contemporary capitalism.