Notes on Modern Nomadic Life

From the ancient Phoenician trading in the Mediterranean to the warring Mongol empire to modern day immigrants trading skills, there has always been a strong impulse for a subset of humans in each competing society to up and go in search of better opportunities. Large diasporas made up of Chinese, East Europeans, Asians and including a large chunk of the direct descendants of the Phoenicians, Lebaneses.

Formed around city-states, Phoenicians mirror modern electronic nomads moving from metropolis to metropolises: San Francisco, New York, Montreal, Vancouver, Paris, Munich, Shanghai, Buenos Aires... Centers of composite multicultural societies or melting pots , they've far outproduced and out-innovated sedentary locals by exposure to a large variety of cultures in the same lifetime.

Whether genetic impulse or societal pressure or maybe both (after all, migration is part of the human experience), these movements have led to a global culture further extended in modern time by the Internet and air travel.

Strong and welcoming cultures to immigrants have created liberal and open-minded city-societies with an appetite for constant changes. Trading has moved from physical objects to ideas or at least ideas of physical products and the rate of exchanges has accelerated.

Modern nomads have few physical possessions and rely instead on their electronic assets as the center of their identity. Instead of buying souvenirs to collect dust, they keep their possessions light with a focus on consumables and digital copies. Their life is often anchored by sedentary family members and friends in many countries with which they keep contact through intellectual exchanges, common interests and local news that could have global relevancy.

Being well remunerated for their experience, skills and knowledge they move from countries to countries while staying connected. They often live in self-contained family cell of 2 to 4 individuals. They follow opportunities without any of mental and financial burden of mortgages, car loans or pets. Atheists or philosophical with few fixed traditions or with religions that are either very personal (portable) or for which centers of worship exists everywhere, they move around freely. To prosper, they favor tolerance and political neutrality but seek discussions and exchanges of views as a way to experience the world. Their closets are full of clothes and styles varying not only through time but through cultures. They are suspicious and critical of nationalisms and borders, politicians hostile to immigrants (legal or not) although they'll also often develop an exaggerated and paradoxical sense of how good the home country is through many comparisons.

There are downsides of course. Unable to own profitably houses, they rent, moving around constantly and having very little motivation to customize their nest to make it welcoming.

Keeping in touch with friends is difficult and it is hard to create additional interconnections in their global social circle to strengthen it. They often isolate themselves to their small and tightly wound family cell outside work connections.

When not staying long enough, they only skim cultures without any real depth and often forget large chunk of cultural knowledge if they move too quickly. They are generally blind to the majority of the country, living in the very special and exceptional metropolis of each where life often has no relationship with the "countryside" where real power is often held.

Often assaulted by waves of differences and working at assimilating the basic cultural necessities, they often miss on grabbing deeper opportunities.

Various taxation, working visas and regulatory systems make moving around painful.

Some ideas to work around the issues faced by the modern nomad:

• standing invitation to family and friends to serve as a forward base for tourism expeditions;
• renting fully furnished and equipped apartments (beyond even current standards) to provide an "home sweet home" without having to sacrifice comforts;
• participation in sports activities popular worldwide (association football aka soccer);
• self-expectation of continuous language and cultural acquisition;
• move often and aggressively outside the boundaries of the metropolis;
• acquire a good understanding of local history for at least the last 100 years;
• share your growing understanding of local culture online;
• add alerts or subscriptions to local news sites for the current and past cities you've lived in;
• keep notes of the opportunities as you discover them;
• open yourself to opportunities to socialize with all social stratas and castes;
• stay off the beaten path;
• get to know locally popular artists and culture (and hopefully learn to like some!);
• keep "bookmarks" on cultural artifacts that you like (movies, songs, books);
• stay more than a year in your host country (3 years?).

Interesting researchable questions:

• What countries have the largest net inflow and outflow of migrants?
• What % of GDP is contributed by migrants (organized by length of stay)?
• What attracts migrants? Can being the "world's university" and center of business startups be the main economic driver for a country?
• Can migrants replace low birth rate in western societies?
• How do countries integrate new migrants well?
• What's the top inflow that a country can realistically support without creating inter-cultural tensions?
• What country grants the most work visa per capita?
• What further parallels can be made with past nomadic groups?
• Are nomadic groups cyclical? Are they only possible currently because of the American empire?
• What are the consequences of the differences between economic and political refugees and highly skilled / rich migrants?
• All other things equals, what are the compensation benefits or knowing 1, 2, 3 languages?