Social infrastructures of mobility: Relational encounters between foreign and local digital nomads in the Philippines

Abstract

Over the past decade, scholarship on digital nomadism and co-working spaces has grown substantially, with much of it focused on the socio-technical infrastructures that enable remote workers—especially from the Global North—to pursue mobility and leisure in the Global South. In the Philippines, this global trend intersects with local dynamics. While the state promotes policies to attract foreign digital nomads and builds a cultural economy around their presence, digital nomadism is also emerging as an appealing path for Filipino online freelancers. As one of the world’s largest providers of labor to cloudwork platforms, the Philippines offers a critical vantage point for understanding how digital nomadism is locally practiced and reimagined, and the dynamics of their social relations. This paper explores the social infrastructures -- both lifestyle and transactional -- that sustain and are shaped by the interactions between foreign and local digital nomads in the Philippines. It pays attention to the racialized and classed dynamics that structure these communities, revealing how global mobility and local precarity coexist in shared spaces. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with Filipino digital nomads, field observations in physical hubs across the country, and analysis of digital nomad content on social media, this study contributes to broader conversations on the socio-technical ecosystems underpinning digital labor.