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The global nomad, the local cost

Portugal has been transforming into a center for high-income immigration for several years now – not in the sense of luxury vacations, but rather digital nomads, employees who work remotely on behalf of clients, companies based in Northern Europe or the US. The preferential visa and tax relief arrangements that exempt them from taxes on their foreign income, together with the Mediterranean lifestyle, have made this part of the world a paradise for this group of people. Alex Holder, a British writer who settled in Lisbon, admits that her decision was linked to so-called “tax optimization,” emphasizing the ease with which she obtained non-permanent residence as a freelancer with her own company, without paying income tax in Portugal on her foreign earnings.

According to Honder, the prosperity promised by the political supporters of digital nomads remained concentrated among the privileged newcomers themselves, rather than among low-paid local Portuguese. In Madeira, where the “Digital Nomad Village” experiment was touted as a model of local development, the result was a system of social exclusion where few locals joined the communities set up to “take care of them,” while even the president of the local community stated that he had never met the project managers.

Although governments promote the policy of attracting digital nomads as a field of glory for the economy, residents are experiencing a version of modern colonization with market executives, influencers, and ambitious startupers transforming the streets of Lisbon or Punta del Sol into economically inaccessible showcases completely cut off from the daily lives of locals. In Colombia, activists such as Ana Maria Valle Villegas openly denounce the transformation of their neighborhoods into “Airbnb zones” and the gradual displacement of residents from their homes due to rising rents – in other words, what the phenomenon of overtourism manages to do in terms of economic exhaustion of the locals, a clearly smaller group of “wealthy” people manages to do.

The economy of the foreigner

The incomes of digital nomads, although initially presented as boosters of the local economy – and indeed they may have been for businesses and specific sectors – are turning into loops of social inequality. In Portugal, 60% of workers have a monthly income of less than €1,000, while digital nomads pay €5 for a flat white coffee, €35 for an hour of Pilates, and living in apartments they bought at prices up to 82% higher than locals – leading to skyrocketing prices and the eviction of residents from their neighborhoods. In Ponta do Sol, Madeira, the “digital community” that promised to coexist with locals has ended up creating parallel economies and separate worlds: foreigners who work exclusively with foreign clients, spend money among themselves, and communicate only in English, without any real cultural or social integration, a relationship of service and dependence. The coworking space, advertised as a meeting hub, rarely hosted Portuguese people; instead, it hosted educational seminars on breathwork, shadow work, and NFTs, indirectly excluding those who could not follow the lifestyle of “conscious productivity.”

On the other side of the Atlantic, specifically in Colombia and Puerto Rico, the imposition of nomadic culture took on almost colonial characteristics. The El Poblado neighborhood in Medellin has been transformed into an Instagram utopia, while in San Juan, locals find that they now hear more English than Spanish on the streets. The pattern is quite clear: gentrification, cultural displacement, and social disconnection, not because of the bad intentions of individuals, but because of the imbalance of power and privilege. A natural consequence is local political reactions, as Dave Cook, an anthropologist at UCL, says: “If you go to a place to take advantage of a lower cost of living, you are hacking inequalities, and there will be pushback, politically.”

“The cultural problem with digital nomads is that they do not promote multicultural coexistence but replace the local with an internationalized post-liberal culture of productivity, where the local community is unable to assimilate – it does not even need to – and engage with it, resulting in it being reduced from a subject to a functional background.”

Is it primarily a cultural clash?

But as the economic impact of digital nomads disrupts real estate and local services markets, a cultural clash is also taking place, because it is not just high rents that are rising, it is the redefinition of the public sphere. On the streets of Lisbon, Medellín, or Punta del Sol, people now speak a different language, not only literally but also symbolically. Communities that were once formed around the local language, the local market, the church, or the café are now quietly giving way to the everyday life of the English-speaking, “conscious,” tax-optimized foreigner with their MacBook open in the café, ordering a matcha tea to start the day off right.

The cultural problem with digital nomads is that they do not promote multicultural coexistence but replace the local with an internationalized post-liberal culture of productivity, where the local community is unable to assimilate – it does not even need to – and engage with it, resulting in it being reduced from a subject to a functional background.

The crucial factor is not the nomads’ intention, but the power imbalance that allows them to choose their location, culture, and experience without ever having to reciprocate, integrate, or be accountable, because they explicitly identify themselves as not migrants, not expats, not locals. They are temporary residents with a long-term impact. It is a form of ephemeral colonization in which nomads maintain their social networks, their clients, their income, and bring with them a value system that does not negotiate with the local element. Gentrification is not simply urban planning; rather, it redefines the principles of public and private life, revisiting what is considered productive, what is considered “culture,” what food is worth photographing, and what language is worth listening to.

Similar to overtourism, here too the conflict is between two opposing conceptions that arise from unregulated systems, resulting in burdensome heterotopias of real space and society, as opposed to those who see the city as a place to live and self-actualize. Digital nomads do not recognize the need for integration nor are they subject to adaptation policies. They are not required to learn the language, understand local struggles, or negotiate their position within social hierarchies. And yet, their presence radically alters the environment around them. Their power is neither institutional nor state-based; it is fluid, that of a nomad.

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