Nijmegen School of Management
Koskela joined RUNOMI as a postdoctoral researcher in early 2023 to fill a Sector Plan funded position titled “Digital Nomads: the future of remote working migrants”.
Tell us about your work and how it relates to the foci of RUNOMI?
I work in the intersections of migration and digitalization. My research focuses on ‘digital nomads’, individuals who combine remote work practises with continuous travel. I approach digital nomads as one type in a wider spectrum of transnational remote working mobilities that also include so called ‘workations’ (combining remote work with vacationing in ways that are closer to tourism practises) but also novel types of digital labour migrations. where individuals move to another country while still retaining their remote jobs or clients in their country of origin. This has been made possible with the rapid onset of the so-called ‘digital nomad visas’ established by countries around the world. These visas are in many ways the answer to the modern separation of work from physical location, but they are still in many ways unfinished products. Much of my investigation deals with how these visas will be received and adopted by the digital nomad community themselves.
What are some related themes that interest you going forward?
During this research project I have spent about 9 months in total doing fieldwork among digital nomad communities in Thailand, Vietnam, Spain, Croatia and Bulgaria. Researching such a hypermobile, globally dispersed community has its specific challenges and questions. Next, I’ll be working on a methodological and reflexive article with a digital nomadism researcher colleague from Finland about what we have each learned in our time out in the field.
Selected outputs
Koskela, K., & Beckers, P. (2024). Typologizing Digital Nomad Visas: Comparing Policy Rationales from Tourism to Wealth Accumulation to Immigration. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 26(5), 407–425. https://doi.org/10.1080/13876988.2024.2343696
RUNOMI Policy Brief 2/2024: ‘Digital Nomad Visas’: Critical gaps in the management and facilitation of transnational remote working mobilities. https://runomi.org/policy-briefs/
Feature in the ‘Digital Nations Blog’ (Republic of Estonia e-Residency program website) https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/blog/posts/digital-nomads-and-the-evolving-world-of-remote-work/