Introduction: Understanding Neo-nomadic Mobilities beyond Self-actualisation

Abstract

In 2018, Noel Salazar presented a paper at the 5th World Humanities Forum in Busan, South Korea, entitled “Moveo Ergo Sum: Mobility as Vital to Humanity and Its (Self)image,” in which he reflected on the existential need for people to move. Moveo ergo sum became the motto for the 2021 Global Mobility Humanities Conference (GMHC), encouraging us to think about the multiple ways in which mobility intersects with the construction of modern subjectivities (Salazar, “Introduction”). The expression recalled a quote from one of Fabiola Mancinelli’s research participants, a digital nomad from the US, whose words and unusual biography as a location-independent entrepreneur read like a declaration of selfactualisation through mobility, the desire to realise her full potential by constantly putting herself outside her comfort zone: “Travel is who I am, and this is not negotiable” (426). This remarkable coincidence was the trigger for us to propose the panel “Understanding Neonomadic Mobilities beyond Self-actualisation” to unpack the mobility-identity nexus as an analytical lens to explore the phenomenon of contemporary nomads.