The Work Nomad

Minnes
Minnes
Jul 23, 2017 · 4 min read

“A nomad is a member of a group of people who travel from place to place rather than living in one place all time” Collins English Dictionary Online (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/nomad).

In the last few years my interest if you looked at my YouTube history has been canal boats, tiny houses, van and RV dwellers. At this point I am interested by the nomadic lifestyle. Often watched after a working day, these people who live in vans/campers/SUV’s or RV’s has created my own special style of ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response). I find it very interesting and relaxing to hear about how they travel, what the person’s ‘rig’ is like and how they shower/cook etc. while on the road or parked up.

However, I wonder if in this age we also have the working nomad? A lot of the van and canal boat dwellers are majoritively work nomad’s. Never having a statutory office base, but one that glides or rolls on down the road with an antenna pitched towards a sporadic internet signal. I would suggest that the work nomad is not restricted to travellers but a way of working experienced by many.

I suggest this in a period where in the UK the term ‘the gig economy’ is being actively debated and found to be problematic. Overwhelmingly, the ‘gig economy’ offers little of the work employment protection that had been fought and legislated for throughout the 20th Century. Another prism to look at the ‘gig economy’ will be found to offer flexibility that was or is not available through a traditional working contract (BBC News, 10th February 2017).

However, and you know that I do love a bit of coffee shop research, I would argue that there are many workers in coffee shops and co-working spaces that are working nomad’s; working contract to contract or creating their own writing or business opportunities. The working nomad is co-produced by the evolution of the workplace from functional to one of personal experience, and the evolution of technology as it’s own sphere of a nomadic experience; never constructed in the one place as embodied by some blue and white-collar employment.

The term ‘gig’ though resonates with the idea of a performer turning out for a performance, being paid a one-off fee that could be chicken feed or handsome but lacks regular payment; depending on the the performer. Like the performer, we are all actors in our lives. It happens that, like actors, some get paid more than others. A performer may have signed up for this possibility when they started their career but many in other jobs and careers do not. Therefore instability when you are on a minimum wage is much closer to not having enough for rent or food.

The work nomad has a similarity to the ‘gig’ economy but embodies a different experience. It can be an active choice to participate as a nomad, whether that is through negative work experience that pushes you into self-employment right down to the fact the workplace is not the creative place an individual wished for. The work nomad finds comfort in being anonymous in a co-working, neutral space that offers the opportunity to engage with people of choice and personal value.

My personal opinion is that I find the idea being a work nomad quite appealing. I don’t wish to think of what age retirement is going to come to me, which in the UK is looking like 68 years of age, but rather to live my own freedom to choose what work I do, when I begin and end it. It has taken me 26 years of different work experiences and study to think about this. I do benefit, however,from the safety net of having paid into a few pension pots, have a small flat that could be paid off by the time I am in my early 60’s and live in a country that offers a state pension and is also increasingly debating the possibility of a basic income.

It could be the best and the worst of times to be a work nomad. I am lucky to have a lot of work experience, qualifications and freedom to do something about it. Some people due to life chances do not. It could be argued that generation X is the last of the generations to have had the opportunities of a nanny state that programmed us with a certain goal to being financially secure so we would be less of a financial burden to the state when we got lucky and entered our ‘third age’, commonly spoken about during the years of New Labour when speaking about people aged 65 and over. The nanny or welfare state is increasing failing to protect many people.

Maybe the work nomad is another age of working, taking the radical centre-left ideology of Anthony Giddens The Third Way (1998) and placing work, in place of the welfare state, as requiring radical re-constitution. To do this though other structures need to change to support the work nomad, such as the availability of a basic income. Essentially, if the work nomad has chosen this way of life he is like the nomad, a community of people who never settle in one place but are constantly travelling to find life experiences. We need varying degrees of finances to support our life experiences; each person an individual in that respect.

Until then, the coffee shop or co-working space will continue to be the work nomad’s camp for the few hours that one or more coffee’s and an internet signal can last!

Bibliography

Giddens, A. (1998) The Third Way: The renewal of social democracy, Polity Press.

Wilson, B. (2017) What is the ‘gig’ economy?, 10th February 2017, London: BBC News Online (accessed 23rd July 2017) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38930048

I pay myself to think. Youth Worker and former Gender Studies student now writing on LGBTQ culture, social spaces and gender.

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