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The Digital Nomad Lifestyle: (Remote) Work/Leisure Balance, Privilege, and Constructed Community

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Abstract

This paper overviews key concepts about the digital nomad lifestyle, which is defined as the ability for individuals to work remotely from their laptop and use their freedom from an office to travel the world. This concept has found a lifestyle movement that sells itself via personal blogs, Instagram feeds, in-person conferences, news features, and numerous e-books. Based on interviews with thirty-eight self-described nomads, this paper overviews the digital nomad lifestyle around the themes of privilege, inequality, leisure, work, and community. Stebbins’ (International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure, 1, 43–53, 2018) concept of serious leisure provides one theoretical perspective, in addition to other sociological theories of leisure, work, and community.

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  1. Siena College, Loudonville, NY, USA

    Beverly Yuen Thompson

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  1. Beverly Yuen Thompson
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Correspondence to Beverly Yuen Thompson.

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Thompson, B.Y. The Digital Nomad Lifestyle: (Remote) Work/Leisure Balance, Privilege, and Constructed Community. Int J Sociol Leis 2, 27–42 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41978-018-00030-y

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