Breaking the Contract: Digital Nomads and the State

Abstract

This article explores ethnographically how digital nomads reconcile their commitment to ‘freedom’ with their relationships to state institutions. It analyses the ways these ‘global citizens’ attempt to weaken ties with nation-states and challenge state–citizen relations in areas of work, citizenship, and mobility. On the surface, digital nomads appear to break the ‘social contract’ via borderless subjectivities, or via the creation of transnational businesses. Yet in practice they remain entangled in multiple state institutions, both directly and via corporate entities, to get closer to their hotly desired ‘freedom’. This article explores digital nomads’ attempts to ‘opt-out’ or ‘re-draw’ the social contract, and illustrates the tension between the imagined social contract and how actual state–citizen relations develop over time and are experienced through the filters of global corporations, free markets, and entrepreneurial thinking.