Alter-Nomad: Mobility and Globalization

If travel is the physical movement of going from one place to another, animal migrations could be considered as travels too. The difference is that animal migration is seasonal, whereas human travel isn’t. Travel is a man’s impulse. It’s in our nature to wonder and wander. However, traveling is a cultural thing as well, exclusive to sedentism. As the philosopher Gilles Deleuze shows, nomads do not travel: “nothing travels less than a nomad”[@abecedaire]. Nomads are anchored to a territory and circle around it in a seasonal fashion. Their life is linked to this territory.

It’s extremely important to note that nomadism is not just about travel. This statement goes for digital nomadism as well. Nomadism is polymorphic. It varies both in time and space. Inuits and Tuaregs are both famous nomadic populations, yet their cultures are vastly different. Similarly, nomadism in the early history of civilization is unlike modern nomadism. There is a historical nomadism and a modern one including sub-cultures such as digital nomadism.

We can observe three kinds of nomadism throughout history: physical (historical nomadism), intellectual/spiritual (globalization or mercantile nomadism), and digital (not only digital nomads but also digital transformation as a whole).

Losing its hereditary aspect at the end of the first millennium, historical nomadism gradually disappears. Mobility is motivated by dogma, pilgrims seeking to purify their souls and crusaders waging wars in the Middle East, but also by sheer curiosity with intellectual movements with representatives such as Averroès, Thomas d’Aquin or Marco Polo. As the latter shows, trade is also one of the main reasons why people travel at the time. Later, writings and intellectual developments are empowered by the invention of the writing press in 1454. It’s the start of a mercantile nomadism.

Mercantile nomadism appears with the first wave of globalization, characterized by the discovery of America. Settlers, pirates, and explorers access new wealth. This manna is sought by the European States in a dire need to keep their power over the Old Continent. The flow is eased for those who work, for those who think, and more generally, for those who create wealth. Work mobility becomes an economic necessity. The liberalization of travel involves institutional reforms. This free flow already becomes a source of inequalities and misery, slave trade being a striking example.

Merchantile nomadism originates from the sedentary need to accumulate wealth, which results in a convergence of sedentism and nomadism towards a hybrid favoring a free flow of goods over a free flow of men, or at least limited to a small part of the global population.

This first globalization gives birth to a second one, an industrial nomadism where movements are industrialized. Cowboys, hobos or the Charlot of Chaplin are part of this new generation of nomads. In Europe, the Industrial Revolution pushes the States to prepare future wars through colonization, leading to globalized migratory flows toward colonized countries, including Northern America. Those generations of workers regularly travel to build across the country. Travel is industrialized: a journey of 6 months by coach is reduced to one week by steam train. These urban nomads, that Jack London depicts so well in his novel The Road, constitute a cheap labor force. Their situation is precarious, living in communities called jungles, moving from one town to another depending on the jobs available, from which they barely survive.

After World War II, globalization enters a third phase. Mobility becomes not only physical (historical nomadism) and intellectual (mercantile nomadism), but also digital. A virtual nomadism where anyone can travel from the safety of their home using new technologies: telecom, software… a hyperworld where individuals and hardware constitute a meshed network, built from mobile entities creating a substitute to travel.

This three-dimensional nomadism is modern nomadism, also known as neo-nomadism. Neo-nomadism is omnipresent in our sedentary cultures. Political nomads such as migrants, refugees, homeless people… all cast aside from society, but also workers — expatriates, remote workers, modern hobos — and tourists. Every globalized trade flow is part of neo-nomadism as well. Nomadism is plural, but each branch shares this concept of mobility. Nomadism is not just a lifestyle based on mobility, it includes all the economic and social phenomenon originating from globalization.

Globalization has its benefits. It decreased the cost of travels. It’s never been cheaper to move across the globe. As a result, seasonal tourists are legion, but trends like digital nomadism, enabled by remote work, are spreading as well. Travel is not only industry. It has become a lifestyle, in between historical nomadism and traditional sedentism. All you need is an apartment from Airbnb and a plane ticket from Skyscanner. But it comes at a cost. Globalization comes with challenges too. The economic inequalities between countries are still increasing. We didn’t eradicate war. Environmentalism is still marginal. I truly believe we can use travel as a tool to propose viable solutions to the challenges of globalization.