Migrant workers?
Conversation
Replying to
As a pattern of life I mean, not 1-time deportation from 1 place
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_w
"Migrant workers usually do not have an intention to stay permanently in the country or region in which they work."
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Admittedly, this is mobility forced by economic opportunity, which may not count for what you're thinking about.
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I think that is true of say the Middle East Which is mostly a terrible place if you’re not a sheikh. Not the US or EU, at least not until recently.
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It's not a recent innovation: "Grapes of Wrath" was all about it.
nfwm.org/education-cent has more details.
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Sure, it’s a constant in history actually, but I’m getting at something closer to pastoral nomadism but for an information economy. Certain specialized professions like oil drilling or cable-laying come close.
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Software development, especially for startups, has a collective force pushing people to move to San Francisco (despite, or maybe even because, its mostly out of room).
I remember someone saying similar things about finance and NYC, though I couldn't source it.
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Ah, probably doesn't fit since it's (intended to be) a one-time move.
Insurance claims and certain other types of contracting require you to visit places regularly, whether it be a client on-site or a crash site.
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Both of which (along with my bad examples) fits your original model.
Excluding farming from your model makes it somewhat self-fulfilling. If you eliminate the existing lower class examples, what's left will be middle-class, because forcing upper-class people isn't done.
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Well farming is by definition tied to land.
The oil drilling example is mostly blue collar. An older example is printers/typesetters, who were noted in Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class book as the first industrial nomad class.
But information is fundamentally more mobile.
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Oil drilling is likewise location tied. In both cases the worker is not native to the location, and will not rehome there long-term.
Information being mobile leads to concentrations of processing power (LA, NYC) more than migratory patterns. Its easier to move info than people.
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