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WORLD ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNION

CONGRESS 2024​

Paper

Technological work and the utopia of flexibility: mobility and ageism among digital nomads in the technological district of Barcelona

presenters

    Josep Puigbo Testagorda

    Nationality: Spain

    Residence: Spain

    Universitat Rovira i Virgili

    Presence:Online

Keywords:

globalization, digital nomadism, Barcelona, innovation district, coworking spaces

Abstract:

This communication analyzes the social and symbolic relationships carried out by the technology workers of the 22@ district in the Poblenou neighborhood of Barcelona. Through the result of more than two years of ethnographic fieldwork in the area, the dynamics of local and international mobility of these subjects are exposed, as well as the cultural meanings that they put into play in the neoliberal city. Within this group, a group of recently graduated young Europeans stand out who work in the area and follow a diverse pattern of post-industrial nomadism that does not seek to settle permanently in Barcelona, so much as a temporary tourist experience. In their narratives, they renounce experiencing Catalanness and defend the search for a vacation and recreational self that influences the formation of an urban work culture based on the lack of permanent structures and constant work and geographic change. The discourses and practices of the 22@ technological workers allow us to reflect on the position that Barcelona occupies in the international market of cities and expose some of the social impacts implicit in this global mobility, such as the cultural phenomenon of technological ageism.