In the text, ““Digital Nomads and Settler Desires: Racial Fantasies of Silicon Valley Imperialism,” Erin McElory analyzes the new and controversial identity of “digital Gypsies”, a term which wealthy digital nomads have stolen from a marginalized traveling group who faces ethnic biases because of their traveling culture to describe their desire to explore the world and different cultures while maintaining a high paying American job. This accumulation of wealth is built off of unjust societal structures such as imperialism, appropriation, displacement, and more topics with other racial bias undertones.
The desire of white males to appropriate the Roma identity reminds me of the text “Decolonization is Not A Metaphor” in which the same group romanticized and tried to adopt Indigenous culture for their aesthetic purposes. Both marginalized groups are regarded as a mystical identity that breaks free from the individual ownership of property and land divisions that Western countries use with Indigenous communities seeing land as a community commodity and the Roma people traveling across countries without regard for imposed borders. While the “rule breaking” aspect of these cultures are admired, the actual practice by minority groups is not, leading to the cultural appropriation seen in which the white males participating in this are admired. One important aspect of adapting these cultures is the inability to commit to this identity fully and let go of Western ideas about land. When adopting the Native American identity, the white male thinks he has a claim to their land as defined by the individualists American values. Similarly when he is adopting the Roma culture, he still has claims to his corporate job and wealth in America.
This text reminded me of an expat who I had seen on Tik Tok a while back who didn’t consider herself an immigrant and had moved to a country where birthright citizenship was practiced and planned on having children there in order to give them a new nationality for predominantly aesthetic reasons. When an immigrant who came from a lower income background does this, their children are called “anchor babies” and their gained nationality is seen as controversial and not a quirky and unique story like those of expats. This example shows how wealth can make a difference in immigrants’ experiences and perspectives and minimizes struggles in adapting to a new country that lower income immigrants may have, leading to the adaptation of a new identity.
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