2025 Theses Master's

Digital Nomads and Gentrification in Barcelona and Medellín

Kipcakli, Suheyla

“Digital nomads” are remote workers from Western countries living abroad in (often cheaper) cities, and their lifestyle has become trendy since COVID-19 spurred an increase in remote work arrangements— with some reporting a 131% growth in digital nomads since the pandemic (Busuttil, 2024; “2024 Digital Nomads Trends Report,” 2024). However, digital nomads have become the subject of controversy, as their American Dollar-lined pockets have been alleged to make the cities they inhabit more expensive for everyone else.

Locals in Medellín, Mexico City, and Bali have reported sharp increases in housing prices and thus gentrification and displacement as a result of an influx of foreign remote workers on “Digital Nomad Visas.” However, the isolated impact of digital nomads on cities in Europe like Barcelona and Berlin, which have been undergoing touristification for years, is less clear.

This thesis will investigate how digital nomads impact different host cities, comparing Medellín, Colombia, in the Global South with Barcelona, Spain, in the Global North. Are there urban and national economic contexts that stand to benefit more from attracting remote workers, and what policies could potentially mitigate the negative effects of gentrification while maximizing national economic benefits?

This paper thus explores questions of gentrification on local, national, and international scales, as well as how urban and national economies and policies interact, with the goal of arriving at context-specific policy recommendations. Ultimately, digital nomads can accelerate gentrification, impacting Medellín more strongly than Barcelona, but they are not a key cause— policies that deprioritize affordable housing are.