Page 37 - WHERE WE WORK - Schlegelmilch

Moving between places
2.1 Introduction
Digital nomads work anywhere and anytime (Chayka, 2018), as physical places have become irrelevant for this digital workforce’s organizing. Or have they not? While nomadic workers conduct work in highly autonomously, characterized by substantial discretion over the 'when' and 'where' of working, I argue that place is more relevant than ever to their organizing. Having not one designated place to work, the modern worker’s work environments vary immensely, from co-working spaces (Garrett et al., 2014; Gerdenitsch et al., 2016; Kingma, 2016; Spinuzzi, 2012), third workplaces like cafés or libraries (Bilandzic & Foth, 2013; Di Marino & Lapintie, 2015; Kingma, 2016). Work can be conducted independently of a designated place, but it is unclear what exactly enables nomadic work in the variety of places.
Recent work has defined the boundaries of digital nomadism, namely as professionals using digital technologies to work online and achieve location-independence and, to varying extents, combine working and traveling (Müller, 2016; Reichenberger, 2017). Drawing on the related literature about mobile knowledge workers – who work in different places and in a mobile manner but have a stable living location (Cohen, 2010) – does not seem to allow us to fully understand what we observed in our research on nomadic workers. Digital nomads are a contemporary work phenomenon that is distinct from other phenomena in the extant literature, such as mobile knowledge workers or expats. For example, mobile knowledge workers create work environments in mobile settings (Brown & O’Hara, 2003; Erickson & Jarrahi, 2016; Humphry, 2013; Liegl, 2014; Moores & Metykova, 2009) but, in contrast to digital nomads, mobile knowledge workers travel for work (Brown & O'Hara, 2003). Digital nomads' motivation to travel and work location-independently is “inextricably connected with freedom to learn and experience” (Reichenberger, 2017, p. 9), and work and leisure are not separated. When work and life are not spatially separated anymore, this has implications for how workers interact with places as well.
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