Sep 21, 2026 · 23 min · 8 segments
Sociology professor Beverly Yuen Thompson has researched and written a book and eight academic articles on the digital nomad lifestyle. In this video, she defines the digital nomad lifestyle and…
Beverly Yuen ThompsonHostSo the digital nomad lifestyle is especially prevalent among the millennial generation when I was looking at it.
And so back when I was interviewing folks, they were basically folks in their perhaps late 20s, early 30s.
They are people from Western nations, high income countries, the United States, Europe, UK, Australia.
And they're just really unsatisfied with how life is turning out for them in their home country because they went to college, they pursued all the right things.
These are very, you know, middle class white folks who were promised everything by their parents.
And then things are just not going well for them in their early professional life where they can barely make ends meet.
They can't really afford to ever foreseeably buy a house and just enter that kind of middle-class lifestyle that their parents were able to achieve.
And so what they see in front of them is just this life of drudgery, working in some corporation nine to five, and never being able to attain those kinds of middle-class markers.
And so the digital nomad lifestyle is something they stumble onto while they're mindlessly scrolling at work.
And they talk about all these key concepts and terms of passive income and all of this.
These are people that seek out remote work And then with their remote work, they're able to be untethered from a particular employment location, and they use that freedom to travel the world.
And so ultimately, like within any subculture, there's always a hierarchy.
And so within the digital nomad subculture, The hierarchy is based on those people who can be the most remote, 100% remote.
They don't own a apartment or a house, they don't have a home back in their home country, and they just travel endlessly and for the foreseeable future.
And so they rent Airbnbs, they go to coworking spaces, they hang out with other expats and travelers like themselves, and they think they're living the dream.
And so in this video, I'm gonna get into my top 10 critiques of this lifestyle and how it's
So the digital nomad lifestyle is especially prevalent among the millennial generation when I was looking at it.
And so back when I was interviewing folks, they were basically folks in their perhaps late 20s, early 30s.
They are people from Western nations, high income countries, the United States, Europe, UK, Australia.
And they're just really unsatisfied with how life is turning out for them in their home country because they went to college, they pursued all the right things.
These are very, you know, middle class white folks who were promised everything by their parents.
And then things are just not going well for them in their early professional life where they can barely make ends meet.
They can't really afford to ever foreseeably buy a house and just enter that kind of middle-class lifestyle that their parents were able to achieve.
And so what they see in front of them is just this life of drudgery, working in some corporation nine to five, and never being able to attain those kinds of middle-class markers.
And so the digital nomad lifestyle is something they stumble onto while they're mindlessly scrolling at work.
And they talk about all these key concepts and terms of passive income and all of this.
These are people that seek out remote work And then with their remote work, they're able to be untethered from a particular employment location, and they use that freedom to travel the world.
And so ultimately, like within any subculture, there's always a hierarchy.
And so within the digital nomad subculture, The hierarchy is based on those people who can be the most remote, 100% remote.
They don't own a apartment or a house, they don't have a home back in their home country, and they just travel endlessly and for the foreseeable future.
And so they rent Airbnbs, they go to coworking spaces, they hang out with other expats and travelers like themselves, and they think they're living the dream.
And so in this video, I'm gonna get into my top 10 critiques of this lifestyle and how it's
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