Mobile, Free,
Cosmopolitan?
Digital Nomads in Chiang Mai
A Morning in
Chiang Mai
- A café full of laptops
- Video calls to Europe
- Editing videos, building websites
“Many are foreigners — we call them digital nomads.”
They work online, so they can live almost anywhere.
Three questions,
one city
Does it give freedom?
Freedom to work, to move, to choose a life.
What does it do to places?
Rent, work, culture — and who pays for it.
Does it make “citizens of the world”?
Mobility versus a genuinely global outlook.
It can —
but not automatically.
It depends on:
- Who is allowed to move
- How platforms & markets organise the lifestyle
- How people connect with places
6 core academic articles + one real case: Chiang Mai.
Speakers A → B → C → D → E
Freedom
Is the nomad lifestyle really free?
Reichenberger (2018):
“Holistic Freedom”
Why choose location-independent work?
Professional freedom
Choose your work.
Spatial freedom
No fixed office or city.
Personal freedom
Live by your own values.
“Work should feel meaningful — not just a duty to earn money.”
Freedom Has a Cost
Freedom ≠ “no work”.
Freedom
Choose where, when and how you work.
Effort
- Housing & adaptation
- Routes & planning
- Staying productive
You decide where and how — and manage more yourself.
How Freedom
Looks Online
2025 · New Media & Society
Nomads highlight independence and freedom. Work fades; leisure and travel move to the front.
Online: the beach more than the laptop.
Freedom for Whom?
The “traveling entrepreneur” image
Links the image to wider ideas about work — and to gentrification.
Your passport matters
Nomads are often Global North citizens with privileged mobility rights.
“Your passport matters.”
Freedom — Recap & Assessment
Real but partial. Holistic freedom is experienced — and paid for in effort.
Online shows only part. Leisure is visible; work and admin are not.
Not everyone can do it. Mobility is distributed unequally.
The internet enables the work; Instagram makes freedom visible — only part of it.
Reichenberger shows how nomads understand their own freedom. She cannot tell us who is unable to live this way.
The Place
Whose city is it?
Whose city is it?
Nomads are free somewhere — in someone else’s city. Jiwasiddi et al. (2024) asked locals; most earlier research only listened to the nomads.
Chiang Mai:
“Digital Nomad Capital”
A new type of visitor.
- Stays longer than a tourist
- Works for clients outside the destination
- Researched through local citizens, not only nomads
Length of stay
Positive Effects
Coworking & cafés
New spaces, new demand.
Local business
New commercial opportunities.
Knowledge sharing
Workshops and jobs for locals.
Digital infrastructure
Reliable internet benefits residents too.
Online communities
Groups can connect nomads & locals.
Negative Effects
Gentrification
Rising costs in popular neighbourhoods.
Socio-economic gaps
Costs and benefits fall on different groups.
Cultural clashes
Different expectations and rhythms.
“Ambivalent.”
The paper’s own word for the impact — both directions, at once.
2026 Entry Rules: the DTV
Destination Thailand Visa
Holders cannot work for Thai companies or Thai clients.
Applications run through the Thai e-Visa website. Freelancers prove their work with a portfolio — e.g. Fiverr or LinkedIn.
Identity
From where they work to who they become.
Who do they become?
So far: where nomads work. Now: who they become — and who organises that?
D’Andrea (2006):
Post-Identitarian Mobility
Fieldwork with countercultural expatriates — Ibiza and Goa.
Fluidity
Constant movement.
Rootlessness
No fixed anchors like nationality or hometown.
Aesthetic reflexivity
Identity built through lifestyle and taste.
Later scholars note the celebration of limitless freedom — and marginality.
“I am not from this country. I follow music festivals, yoga retreats and creative communities around the world.”
Identity from choices, not from a fixed place.
This is only an illustration of the idea — not an example from his data.
Digital Nomad Infrastructure
Since the 2010s: coworking, coliving, events, visa help — built for nomads.
- Fieldwork + 46 interviews
- Spain · Bulgaria · Thailand
- Plus online data mapping the services
Infrastructure Shapes the Lifestyle
Shapes routes
It guides where nomads go.
Smoother entry
Easier for newcomers to start.
Social infrastructure
A ready-made social world.
To what extent can digital nomadism still be called countercultural?
Much is online — platforms, apps, groups. Identity is shaped by platforms and rankings, not only travel.
D’Andrea = useful lens, not a perfect description. Toivanen leaves open how nomads use, adapt or resist infrastructure.
Cosmopolitanism
Are nomads “citizens of the world”?
Citizen of the world?
Greek origin: citizen of the world. Everyday sense: open to other cultures, caring about people everywhere. Does nomad life produce this?
From Stoicism to Kant
From a philosophical attitude → to a moral-legal project.
kosmopolitês — “world citizen”. Universal reason; we belong to a rational community.
Weltbürgerrecht — “world citizen right”. Universal hospitality; perpetual peace; moral community of humankind.
Moral → Cultural → Moderate
Three contemporary differentiations — each has an extreme and a moderate version.
Global justice; equal moral duties to all humans. Not about taste or travel.
Cultural mixing; the “cosmopolitan canopy”; identity built from plural cultures.
Local belonging + global outlook can coexist. No need to cut your roots to care about humankind.
Extreme cultural view: “only the rootless are truly cosmopolitan” — the popular image of the nomad.
Beck → Kirpitchenko → Nomads
From theory → to everyday measurability → to our test.
Globality (world as connected) · Plurality (accepting diversity) · Civility (respectful difference).
Students & researchers moving between countries. Looks for the three features in everyday intercultural encounters. “Fertile ground” — not a guarantee.
Apply the three features: Do they see global links? Accept difference? Talk with respect across cultures?
We extend these frameworks to nomads — openly stated as a hypothesis to test.
Applying the Test
- Do they see global connections?
- Do they accept differences?
- Do they talk with respect across cultures?
Nomads join local workshops and events, and offer jobs to locals — a possible sign. A nomad who only meets other nomads? Maybe not.
Digital media works both ways. Facebook/Instagram groups can connect nomads & locals [S3]; but many platforms are built for nomads [S14]. We don’t know which effect is stronger — a gap for Section 05.
Horst & Olsen study European migrants; Kirpitchenko studies academics. Applying them to nomads is an extension — a hypothesis to test.
Research Gaps
What we still don’t know.
Putting It Together
Freedom
Real but partial; online it looks like leisure; depends on your passport.
Place
Benefits & costs; mixed evidence; tightening rules.
Identity
Increasingly organised by infrastructure & platforms.
Cosmopolitanism
Possible — but it shows in behaviour, not travel history.
We read six core articles and a few extra sources, not the whole field. These are gaps in what we read.
Gap 1 & Gap 2
Tested, not assumed
Moderate cosmopolitanism and Beck’s three features come from migrants and academics [S6, S7]. None tests them directly on digital nomads.
→ Study what nomads actually do in everyday encounters.
Digital media — bridge or bubble?
Online groups can connect [S3]; infrastructure gives a ready-made social world [S5]. Tools can work both ways.
→ Under what conditions do they build bridges, and when bubbles?
Gap 3, Gap 4 & Future Research
The online image vs. daily life
Instagram shows freedom and leisure [S8]; interviews show effort [S1]. No one links these images to local interaction or local views.
Who can move — and over time
Privileged passports [S10]; Thailand’s 2026 change shows how fast rules shift [S12, S13]. Many studies are snapshots.
→ Cross-country, longitudinal research.
Gaps at a Glance
Missing evidence
Cosmopolitan frameworks not tested on nomads.
Why it matters: we may be applying the wrong lens.
Missing evidence
Digital media’s role — bridge or bubble — unknown.
Why it matters: platforms may shape isolation or connection.
Missing evidence
No link between online image and local interaction.
Why it matters: the image may hide the reality.
Missing evidence
Privileged mobility + fast-changing rules; few long-term studies.
Why it matters: “independent” mobility is conditional.
From Gaps to Questions
What we would actually study next.
Behaviour, not travel history
Do nomads show globality, plurality, civility in everyday encounters?
Platforms — bridge or bubble?
Under what conditions do online groups connect nomads and locals?
Rules over time
How do visa changes and housing policies reshape who can be a nomad?
These questions follow directly from the gaps — and from the fact that mobility is the starting point, not the finish line.
Two people,
one city
- She has real freedom [S1] — but the visa asks where she holds permanent residence [S12].
- She may have chosen the city from a ranking [S14]; online she may show the beach, not the work [S8].
- The barista faces changing costs — evidence is mixed [S15, S16].
The internet makes the lifestyle possible.
Instagram makes it visible — selectively.
Platforms and visas decide who enters.
Mobility is the starting point, not the finish line.
Over to You
Instagram & TikTok
Have you seen nomad content? Did it make remote work look easier than it is?
Passports & visas
If a visa depends on your passport and legal residence, is “location-independent” work really independent?
Backup
Should a city like Chiang Mai welcome or limit nomads — and who should decide?
Sources S1–S6
[S1] Reichenberger, L. (2018). Digital nomads — A quest for holistic freedom in work and leisure. Annals of Leisure Research, 21(3), 364–380. https://doi.org/10.1080/11745398.2017.1358098
[S2] Jiwasiddi, A., Schlagwein, D., Cahalane, M., Cecez-Kecmanovic, D., Leong, C., & Ractham, P. (2024). Digital nomadism as a new part of the visitor economy: The case of the “digital nomad capital” Chiang Mai, Thailand. Information Systems Journal, 34(5), 1493–1535. https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12496
[S3] UNSW BusinessThink. (2024, May 26). How digital nomads impact local communities: A Chiang Mai case study. https://businessthink.unsw.edu.au/articles/digital-nomads-local-communities-chiang-mai
[S4] D’Andrea, A. (2006). Neo-nomadism: A theory of post-identitarian mobility in the global age. Mobilities, 1(1), 95–119. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450100500489148
[S5] Toivanen, M. (2023). Countercultural lifestyle no more? Digital nomadism and the commodification of neo-nomadic mobilities. Mobility Humanities, 2(2), 70–89. https://doi.org/10.23090/MH.2023.07.2.2.070
[S6] Horst, C., & Olsen, T. V. (2021). Transnational citizens, cosmopolitan outlooks? Migration as a route to cosmopolitanism. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 11(1), 4–19. https://doi.org/10.33134/njmr.337
Sources S7–S12
[S7] Kirpitchenko, L. (2014). Locating cosmopolitanism within academic mobility. Cosmopolitan Civil Societies, 6(1), 56–75. https://doi.org/10.5130/ccs.v6i1.3551
[S8] Miguel, C., Lutz, C., Majetic, F., & Perez-Vega, R. (2025). Working from paradise? An analysis of digital nomad Instagram content. New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231205289
[S9] Bozzi, N. — Critical essay on the “traveling entrepreneur” image, work discourse and gentrification.
[S10] Toivanen, M. — On privileged mobility and Global North passports.
[S11] Royal Thai Embassy — Destination Thailand Visa (DTV) information page, Thai e-Visa portal.
[S12] Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs — Announcement of 31 August 2026 on DTV requirements.
Sources S13–S18
[S13] Thaiger. (2026). Reporting on differing embassy practice (Vientiane, Ho Chi Minh City, Los Angeles).
[S14] Nomads.com. (2026, October 31). Chiang Mai cost of living, remote-worker estimate and Nomad Score.
[S15] Peer-reviewed 2024 study on tourism, housing prices around Nimman Road and local income in Chiang Mai.
[S16] Schlagwein, D. — On digital nomads, rising rents and gentrification.
[S17] 2023 special issue on neo-nomadic mobilities, building on D’Andrea.
[S18] Journal editor’s summary of Kirpitchenko (2014) — “fertile ground” for cosmopolitanism.
How We Read
We read six core academic articles, plus a small number of extra sources (policy pages, platform data, journalism). Our gaps are gaps in what we read, not in the whole field.
Platform data are commercial estimates, not official statistics. Applying cosmopolitan theory to nomads is an extension, openly marked as a hypothesis.
Café imagery and closing loop: add your own photo/video credits here. All diagrams and icons are original to this deck.
Thank you.
We would love your questions.