ABRIDGED LITERATURE REVIEW

THE SYAHIM MAG

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THE RETURN TO NOMADISM

ABRIDGED LITERATURE REVIEW

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY OF NOMADISM IN THE US

Property ownership in the United States was and continues to be part of the American dream. Historically, the manifestation of the home existed as a, “means of gaining access, belonging, inclusions and power” However, at the turn of the 20th century a counterculture emerged to rebel against the notion of the home as a means of stability in favor of a life untethered.

Largely comprised of white males, hobohemia emerged introducing new, “rules of membership, codes of behavior, and shared values of the good life.” Rejecting traditional male roles and the stereotypical nuclear family, members of this counterculture often worked odd-jobs and assisted in fueling the industrial and agricultural sectors when working before moving on. These individuals were often criticized in society as lazy and incompetent as many viewed homelessness as a failure instead of as a lifestyle choice. This emerging counterculture or “hippie movement” placed little value on material possessions and valued adventure. They were typically made up of young, college-aged individuals who sought an alternative to consumerism and the dominant culture.

By the 1980s, conservative views began to blame homelessness on the response to this change in ideals citing the alternative lifestyle promoted, “countercultural habits and values such as laziness, irresponsibility, criminality, and the rejection of family life.” These reaction to the hippie movement and vehicle dwelling are believed to be largely misunderstood by conservative opinions; moreover, the predominating opinion of nomadic individuals associated vehicledwelling with homelessness which are not always corresponding conditions.

In the 21st century, this perception of the modern nomad continues to be characterized as a form of homelessness; however, these individuals choosing to travel selfidentify as “house-less” by choice. The continued misperception and criminalization against vehicledwelling individuals persists; however, social media has glamorized and popularized the lifestyle which has caused the vehicle-dwelling community to grow in recent years.

FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO RECENT VEHICLE-DWELLING POPULATION GROWTH

The world is changing physically, socially, and economically at an alarming pace. Many factors are causing these drastic shifts in the United States; however, three factors are overwhelmingly evident: the consolidation of wealth further devastating the affordability of housing market, lifestyle and employment shifts as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the rise of student debt and awakening to employment volatility. Each of these factors will continue to produce a

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shift in lifestyles and values of the American public presenting the notion that more individuals will choose to live nomadically in the next century in order to save for their financial future or build small businesses.

(1) WEALTH DISTRIBUTION & THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING CRISIS

Wealth distribution in the United States continues to consolidate in the favor of the wealthy with each passing year. To demonstrate the rapid rate of wealth consolidation in the United States during the second half of the 20th century, the Congressional Research Service provides the following: “The top fifth’s share of total household income rose from 42.6% in 1968 to 51.1% in 2011; the top 5%’s share rose from 16.3% to 22.3%.” Moreover, in 2019, American Economic Review reported 33.6 percent of all wealth in the nation was held by the top 1 percent of the richest households.

This extreme concentration of wealth is creating a two-class society: the haves and the have-nots. Coupled with crippling student loan debt and stagnate wages, Americans are struggling to pay for the basic necessities of food, utilities, and housing. Luke Petach from Belmont University found, “the share of monthly income spent on rent increased from 28% in 1960 to over 42% in 2016.” This substantial jump in the expense of housing as percentage of income prevents many households from eliminating debts, saving for retirement, and paying their day-today living expenses

(2) LIFESTYLE & EMPLOYMENT SHIFTS AS A RESULT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Since the boom of the 1990s, technology has been empowereing individuals to break free from the traditional nine-five employment model and chart their own path through free agency. In 2001, Daniel H. Pink argued the economy was shifting to a free-agent system, moving away from corporations and traditional

employment that marked the second half of the 20th century. Moreover, the “gig economy” continues to boom among the millennial generation as people seek independence and flexible work schedules to meet the demands of their professional and personal lives.

Even within traditional employment, the Covid-19 pandemic showed many corporations that work-from-home models are possible with existing technology. Donnelly and ProctorThomson noted, “Disasters disrupt the nature of work, creating a culture of ambiguity with shifting priories for individuals, organizations and their wider communities. Operating within subsequent uncertain environments promotes a reassessment of the spatial configuration of work and the adoption of new ways of working.”

Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic exposed many lifestyle hardships occurring in American society and exacerbated many of the systematic issues fueled by distorted capitalism and social inequality. Existing trends were made clear by the economic shut-down as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The workforce inequality has been exacerbated between social classes, races, nationality, sexual orientation, familial status, and age. Discrimination is and has been alive and well in the United States, and the pandemic assisted in revealing more of this systematic injustice through the impact of the economic shutdown.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought these workforce inequalities into the spotlight, and this critical look at traditional working conditions may inspire many young entrepreneurs to break off and start their own business ventures as a way of building more flexible and autonomous lives. The taste of this experience gained through the pandemic lockdowns has and will continue to inspire young workers to take more professional risks in the future in order to build lives that best align with their values.

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(3) RISE OF STUDENT DEBT & THE ACADEMIC AWAKENING

During the COVID-19 pandemic, university students transitioned to remote learning in March 2020 with all classes deployed on an online platform. Although there were deficiencies in the education provided, the model proved education can be offered at a far more flexible and cost-effective rate. However, tuition did not decrease for most students throughout the remote learning provided during the pandemic which has begun to produce a riptide between students and the administration.

Universities have grown into massive institutions and the cost of an education has skyrocketed. An article from the 1989 New York Times archive announced 5-9% tuition increases for four-year public colleges bringing the cost of tuition to $1,694 for the 19891990 academic year; meanwhile, the average cost of tuition in 2020 for a four-year, in-state public university, following an average 4% tuition decrease for pandemic-associated discounts, remains $9,687. After adjusting for 2.47% annual inflation over the last 30 years, tuition in 2020 is nearly three times the cost of tuition in 1989. Moreover, the value of formal education may begin to sway following the wake of the pandemic, as students saw how quickly employment can shift and the lack of loyalty towards employees witnessed during the pandemic panic. The result of these observations may push many young students out of academics and into low-priced online learning platforms that teach specific technical skills needed to pursue entrepreneurial ventures.

However, despite the new revelations pertaining to formal education, the overall impact of the student loan crisis has yet to be fully realized. The millennial generation have entered their home-buying years, and many are currently unable to purchase due to the debt from their higher education. Moreover, universities are completely uninvested in the financial return of their students, which causes a massive influx of students being admitted into popular degrees without the job market to support those new hires. The result becomes a generation of educated individuals who are essentially unemployable.

21st CENTURY NOMADS IN THE UNITED STATES

There are three distinct nomadic movements booming during the COVID-19 pandemic: the vanlife movement, digital nomads, and RV living. These types of nomads were determined based on the amount of media coverage made on each of these groups of individuals from April 2020 to March 2021. Overall, each sector has seen drastic growth as a result of shifting values of the American people, and that growth is predicted to continue into the foreseeable future.

VANLIFE MOVEMENT

#VanLife is, “a one-world life-style signifier that has come to evoke a number of contemporary tends: a renewed interest in the American road trip, a culture of hippie-inflected outdoorsiness, and a life free from the tyranny of a nine-to-five office job.” The movement began in 2011 when Foster Huntington documented his adventurous lifestyle as a photographer living in a 1987 Volkswagen van on the social media platform, Instagram; Huntington coined the hashtag #vanlife as a opposition to rapper Tupac’s “Thug Life”, often associated with glamor and materialism. Stemming from a popularization of the hashtag, vanlife has become a popular trend and aspiration among many young adults in the United States. The social media movement gained traction among adults impacted by the 2008 recession, a time when recent college graduates and young workers saw the disillusion of the American dream while they were entering a hostile job market. The hashtag #vanlife became an, “attempt to aestheticize and romanticize the precariousness of contemporary life.” The values of young Americans shifted with the poor economic circumstances following the recession: why work a 9-5 job that won’t even pay the bills? From a series of interviews performed by Jessica Bergstrom at University of Maine, research found vanlifers define #vanlife as making, “your passion your lifestyle,” and the movement was found to include people choosing to cultivate the lifestyle associated with the movement rather than as an organized group of individuals.

The movement of van living extends beyond the changing of physical domestic space and completely alters all aspects of live. Those participating in the lifestyle need to adjust to new ways of cooking, cleaning, how they associate with material culture, lesssecure work models, and less privacy. Because of the depth of lifestyle changes the movement requires, “the movement can be thought of as more of a long-standing culture rather than just a temporary trend.” Van living remains far cheaper than the increasing cost of traditional housing, but it is not without costs. Rachel Monroe, a reporter for New Yorker, found individuals living on the road in 2017 participated in various types of paid work including remote tech positions, social media marketing, food services, writers on book tours,

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musicians, and temporary handywork. Many of these professionals are traditional in nature, but being carried out in nontraditional ways through gig work and free agency.

Corporations are beginning to rethink the way young Americans will choose to live in the future. Nomadism continues to rise in popularity among millennials as, “45.4% of millennials in 2017 reported that they had lived in their current space for under two years, a rise from 33.8% in 1960.” With the rise in nomadic lifestyles as a result of the pandemic, companies are quickly finding ways to turn the minimalist, low-budget lifestyle into a constant stream of cash. Prior to the pandemic in the fall of 2019, Cabana, a travel-tech startup began using vanlife as a model for boutique hotels offering campervans to vacationers for short-term rentals appealing to individuals romanticizing the #vanlife moment without the fulltime commitment. The impact of the pandemic created new demand for isolating while traveling, escaping the cities, and regaining agency over mobility and movement. Kibbo, a company focusing on capitalizing on the #VanLife movement through the creation of van-specific communities for fulltime digital nomads, attributes increasing housing costs, frequent relocation, an epidemic of loneliness, and a rise in remote work as a result of the pandemic to creating a viable market segment for van communities for young professionals.

DIGITAL NOMADS

The term digital nomad was first coined in 1997 with the release of Makimoto and Manners book, Digital Nomad, where the authors explored the emergence in popularity of individuals who capitalized on the use of mobile technology. Since it’s introduction, the term has encompassed the identity of the few who choose travel as a lifestyle. Digital nomads can be characterized as, “digital workers in the sense that their work primarily involves the manipulation of digital knowledge, and requires constant negotiation with digital services, protocols, and algorithms.” These individuals capitalize on the freedom of technology and remote work to travel continuously throughout the year while maintaining their own work schedule.

The continued effect of globalization has resulted in cosmopolitanism, “the idea that human begins all belong to one global community, not just to particular local ones.” Therefore, the 21st century may be redirecting the definition of culture away from geographic definitions and toward shared values and lifestyles of individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds. For example, “contemporary nomads symbolize agency that can defy economic rationale and is informed by cultural motivations. Many have abandoned material conceptions of status in order to shape an alternative lifestyle which instead values autonomy, experience and self-expression.” As a result of these shared values, the culture of digital nomads manifests between individuals from various locations, “making social and cultural identities sustainable in a world where change is unpredictable.”

The number of individual considering digital nomadism in 2019 offers insight as to how the community will grow in the future; “27% of traditional U.S. workers mentioned that they might become digital nomads in the next 2-3 years and 11% of them actually planned to be.” The acceleration of remote work as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic indicate these numbers may climb faster than originally anticipated in 2019 and expand to include more individuals working for large organizations.

Because digital nomads value their autonomy and flexibility, personal and professional freedom, the boundaries between work and life can often blur. While some individuals thrive with this holistic lifestyle, others seek ways to separate the two for improved work performance and/ or life enjoyment. This separation of functionality results in the needs for a home space and a working space. Additionally, a research study form Ohio State University found 76% of digital nomads interviewed for the study were experiencing feelings of loneliness while traveling. Therefore, a third space is required for the digital nomad: a space to socialize and build relationships informally.

RV LIVING

A large RV culture has persisted among many retirees in the United States allowing many individuals to retire early or in financial comfort despite saving small retirement nesteggs. This group of individuals have created an entire culture around RV living and “instant cities” pop up every year in southern states during the winter months full of RV full-time travelers seeking a warm spot to ride out the winter. One such city is Quartzite, Arizona. During the winter months, “authorities say the population mushrooms from 3,500 people to peak at around one million, as the seasonal migrants, or snowbirds, arrive in rumbling convoys of recreational vehicles, or RVs.”

The increase of RV living participants can be seen in the growth of these gatherings over the last decade and

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will continue to persist into the future. The RV lifestyle has also become more popular among younger generations due to the exposure to RV living through Youtube channels and social media. RV dwellers tend to be more conservative, in contrast to their van-dwelling, liberal counterparts.

Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic brought a soar in recreational vehicle sales. The Recreational Vehicle Industry Association saw the, “North American RV sales rising 4.5% in 2020, to 424,400 units… The trade group went up a gear with its 2021 outlook, which calls for a 19.5% surge in unites sold, to 507,200. That would be the industry’s best year ever. The market is uncertain as to whether the industry boom will persist following the widespread distribution of the COVID vaccine.

CONCLUSION OF USER GROUPS

This highly diverse group of individuals participating in the vanlife, digital nomad, or RV living culture explores new ways of living, moving, and working as they reimagine the traditional nomadic lifestyle in the modern world. They are not “down on their luck”; they are not homeless; and they are not the misfortunate. They are smart, calculated, and driven, highly educated individuals. They capitalize on their most valuable resource – time – in order to focus their energy on entrepreneurial ventures facilitated through the virtual world. They take advantage of social media platforms, online stores, and virtual networks to live their passions and design their dream careers. And they do so by living as frugally as possible to achieve freedom from the traditional nine-tofive structure.

Vehicle dwelling becomes the easiest way to cut their most costly expense – housing. And they do so happily in order to live out their passions on their own terms and save their financial resources for other seasons of life. Vehicle dwelling may seem unappealing to some, and many in the mainstream public may find it difficult to understand this lifestyle as a choice and as a freedom, but this movement toward frugal living is attracting more and more members every day, and people – young and old – are living on the road to increase their overall quality of life.

"They are not “down on their luck”; they are not homeless; and they are not the misfortunate. They are smart, calculated, and driven, highly educated individuals."

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