Digital nomad lifestyle: a liminal experience of identity transition

Abstract

This study contributes to the theoretical perspectives on digital nomad identity. The aim is to go beyond the construction of the nomadic identity framed as identi-ty work in liquid modernity. In doing that, the paper offers an empirical investiga-tion of how knowledge workers construct and perform nomadic subjectivities through liminal work identities in under-institutionalized contexts and symbolic consumption. Drawing on the life history of digital nomads living in Chiang Mai and Bangkok (Thailand), this work concludes that digital nomads know or make the experience that the nomadic lifestyle is not a permanent way of life but a spe-cific stage of their life paths. Digital nomads frame their projects of self-realization through the digital nomad lifestyle as a liminal transition. The digital nomad identi-ty emerges as a temporary and opportunistic assemblage of neoliberal do-it-yourself biographies toward the emergence of a post-nomadic identity. However, the paradoxes and constraints embedded in the digital nomad lifestyle can freeze digital nomads in an objective and subjective permanent liminal condition.