New Visa Policies: The Future of Global Work with Dr. Kaisu Koskela
House Of Peregrine (01:03)
Hello everyone and welcome back to the House of Peregrine podcast. Today I am joined by Dr. Kaisu Koskela, an anthropologist, researcher and lifelong traveler who spent nearly 30 years living and working across more
than 80 countries. Originally from Northern Finland, Kaisu grew up near the Arctic Circle and now studies global mobility, digital nomadism, and the rise of remote work visas. She's just finished as a postdoctoral researcher at Radboud University in the Netherlands, where she explored how our choices around movement, work, and belonging shape our lives and our societies. What I find so compelling about Kaisu is that she doesn't just study these questions from afar, she lives them.
Today she's bringing that rare mix of lived experience and deep insight and research to our conversation. Kaisu, welcome to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here.
Kaisu Koskela (01:52)
Thank you so much. very happy to be here.
House Of Peregrine (01:56)
Nice.
Let's just get started. wanna just start from the beginning, growing up, how you did, and then we'll move into the rest of your work. ⁓ I have to say when I first encountered you online, it was a rare mix that I don't often experience, which is someone's doing the work that I have been thinking about that I can't do myself. And so your research and your insights on it really are... ⁓
Kaisu Koskela (02:18)
Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (02:24)
Yeah, answering a lot of questions I have about the world and about travel and living internationally. So tell us how you grew up and how you got to be Kai Su.
Kaisu Koskela (02:31)
Thank you. Yeah.
Well, indeed, if I just comment on the work part, like because ⁓ this is a life that I've been living anyway, and I'm very fortunate now to have found work that is actually fulfilling those, you know, answering those questions for myself as well. Because things like when you when you meet researchers of future work or digital nomadism or any of these things, normally, there are people who come from outside and I'm very much an insider researcher and things came into my
life in a different order. So I'm from a place up north in Finland where basically everything is far away from there. So I wanted to see it all and we did travel when I was a kid with my family as well on holidays and lots and stuff but it wasn't enough for me. So as soon as I finished high school I set off.
to go and work in different parts of the world and do different things. In fact, I went on a package holiday trip to Rhodes, Greece, with a friend and ended up working there on the bus. And this is funny because I'm going back ⁓ after, I think, 15, 20 year break next week for someone's bachelor party, someone who we met there. So I'm getting a full circle moment in a matter of a week. But that was, yeah, I left to go and I just
going pretty much. ⁓
House Of Peregrine (03:55)
So your family lived
in the same place when you were growing up in Helsinki.
Kaisu Koskela (03:58)
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't
⁓ travel. I'm not from a diplomatic family or anything like that. In fact, I have a brother who still lives in my hometown within a matter of couple of blocks ⁓ of his life. Life is exactly circling around a little block in my hometown still. And we grew up very differently, wanting different things. So we were just laughing about that because he believes that places at the belly button of the world and that has everything you could ever want within a matter of couple of blocks. Whereas I'm like nothing.
is
enough. Like in a way I just want to, I've always just wanted to experience the whole world. To me it's not about popping into places, it's about making sure I have enough time to understand a place too and location. Like I don't collect countries, they're not, borders are not very important to me. There's a lot of beautiful regions within countries that people should perhaps focus on more than just the countries but...
Yeah, I've had a very varied professional life as well. I was never stuck in a box. So after working in the bar scene and restaurant scene for long time in Greece and in London, I ended up in hairdressing, actually. I did apprenticeship in London and Covent Garden and I worked in that for quite a while. And then at some point I got the urge to go to university, but I was already like 26, I think, at the time.
when I figured out that the Finnish government is very generous in education. We of course are leading the PISA tests around the world in our education standards, but we also put a lot of money into it. So if you get accepted to study at a university anywhere in the world, the government will pay for you. And I figured at that point, I'm like, hmm, this sounds like a good deal. So I picked a university ⁓ that I thought would be lot of fun.
which was University of Malta in Mediterranean Island nation. And I started studying and I thought I was just going to do a bachelors and, you know, enjoy the semi-free ride of it. But to be honest, we have a saying in Finnish that you lose control of the moped. And that's exactly what happened to me. And I ended up in a lot of different universities around the world and eventually with a PhD as well in anthropology, studying a lot of different things. Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (06:15)
Yeah.
So I want to ask you, did you always know that you were different than your brother? Because I hear this a lot, that people, and I call them Peregrines, that's why we use the word Peregrine, ⁓ is they knew from a very early age that they were different somehow, their worldview, their desires. And as you said, like, I just always, there's never enough, right? Like, it's never enough. The world is big. Do you remember when you realized that?
Kaisu Koskela (06:26)
Yeah.
Yeah.
⁓ not as a kid, because as I said, we did go on like family holidays and stuff. And both my parents had in their youth lived a little bit more international lives, but then settled into one place. so I didn't really think about it. It's just like when we grew up, somehow the things he was interested in were already there where he was. And I always say, I'm, kind of jealous in a way that he's very happy with this small circle of life, right? Whereas I always had to go look for something bigger and stuff. Like I, I.
love my life the way it is and I'm consciously living it on the move. But at the same time, you always give up things, right? Like you do give up a lot of even basic things. Like I travel with a backpack and that's pretty much all I have with me. I don't, I want to have five nice dresses with me, but in fact I can only carry three. So even things like that, or like having ⁓ continuous hobbies.
Going to the same gym or you know, even seeing your friends and family and everyone often enough You do give up a lot. So in a way I'm jealous that someone can Be happily live life in a much smaller circle. But yeah, I don't I don't know what it is We laugh about it a lot how different our lives are yet we come from the same place and the same upbringing and we feel like We are very connected in that way. So yeah, I think it's just
personality issues too, right?
House Of Peregrine (08:07)
Yeah, of course. Well,
I'm that person in my family, so everyone else is more settled. And I've always wondered about it. But it does feel older than me. It feels like it came in me. And so getting into your research a little bit, most recently you were doing your postdoc, if I'm correct, at Radboud University in the Netherlands. And so you've made basically a career of working in this field, which
Kaisu Koskela (08:16)
Mm.
Yeah.
Radboud, Radboud
House Of Peregrine (08:36)
happened before it was cool. Like I feel like digital nomad pieces are, I mean, they're not new, but they're not that old.
Kaisu Koskela (08:39)
Yeah. Yeah.
No, no, they are, they are pretty new. And like the visas themselves started coming out during COVID. But if we talk about digital nomadism as well, the media is portraying as something as if that was new. And it's not true. I was living a digital nomad lifestyle before the word, like that terminology was not there with a bunch of other people who also didn't call themselves digital nomads because we had never heard of that terminology.
But of course, people have been able to ever since technology came to our life and laptops got small enough, people have been able to travel. I've literally met, I meet a lot of people who claim to be the original digital nomad, the first one ever out, but I have met people who have already in the 1980s, they've been coders and they've taken their desktop computers and shipped it to from US to Mexico, for example.
And then did their coding from there and then send a huge case of floppy disks to their employers back in US. Like that's an early form of, okay, it wasn't super nomadic because you couldn't move as fast as you can now. You couldn't set up just anywhere in a cafe, but ⁓ that was definitely the early forms of it. So if we talk about 1980s and the media has only just, you know, gotten hold of this and become like, like as if it's the newest thing ever. I think.
What is happening though is of course we have a lot more people trying out the lifestyle at least or becoming digital nomads because it is becoming more accessible or let's say was becoming more accessible to people during Corona times when most people got to work remotely. And now of course there's a huge call back to the office from bigger employers again, but I don't think it's the end of the lifestyle in any way.
House Of Peregrine (10:34)
No, but I want to go back because digital nomadism isn't new or is new maybe, but I didn't know about the... I mean, I can imagine. I was doing kind of a digital nomad lifestyle in early 2000s when people just thought you were nuts, but being a nomad isn't new. Like living a nomadic lifestyle may be the oldest lifestyle.
Kaisu Koskela (10:49)
Yep.
No.
Of course, it was due to having to do that because animals would graze, because climates were different in the winter to summer and people had to move in search of food a lot of time. But also, I do believe, and it is true, that it is more innate human condition. ⁓ think lot of people now think that the normal is the sedentary life where you have that one place. But that is just, it's more of a construction of things like...
If you do want to buy a house, which is a dream of so many nowadays, and have a mortgage, whatever, and be in that one place, it's going to have to be in one place, right? Because that's how immobile things work. But it's not to say that people don't ⁓ have it in them, the urge that perhaps, what is that famous saying about trees, you know, like people don't have roots because...
They are meant to be moving rather than they're not trees. They can move from place to place. Personally, I think it's a much more fulfilling, rich lifestyle to experience different places and at different places in different seasons and different people and whatnot. I think the modern society has made it more difficult. And then when we get to like my actual research interest is in policy and that has made it very difficult in today's world still to
live a fully mobile lifestyle. are set in a world with nation states and borders and very protective borders at that. So countries are not, to them the ideal situation would be that people were more sedentary and perhaps took a tourism trip every now and then, but certainly not that they move across borders and want to live in different places for a certain amount of time and then move on again.
House Of Peregrine (12:47)
Yeah, and I want to get into your research because what is the... I want to go two directions, but the first one we'll take right now is... So that is preferred. It's almost like a claiming. You have to be claimed or allegienced to a country. That's ideal for the way the world is set up, at least most of the time. But is that, according to your research,
Is that changing or is that being resisted or tell me, guess, about your research and where it goes on this subject.
Kaisu Koskela (13:18)
Yeah.
Well, this is again interesting because migration of people is like if you read the media, you think that's a new thing or like it's at an all time high that people are migrating and moving between countries, let alone digital nomads. But I'm talking about just people who actually more traditional migrant groups who go and work in another country. This is also not true. We've had migrations forever. And in fact, we've probably had so much more migrations before we came up with the idea that
nation states protect their borders and have the right to claim who comes to a territory and for how long. These are in no way new things. I think ⁓ the current situation is when it comes to what I study is that a lot of countries haven't accepted the fact that work no longer equates a certain geographical region. Work has or the ability to work has ⁓ left geography in a way.
Traditional migration, all the rules and regulations and permits on that were based on the fact that you come and work in that country. So you get a local job, you get a local work permit, you get invited by your employer, or perhaps you follow a family member who is going to work in that country. It was very economically centered. It's tied to money and also protective labor markets.
House Of Peregrine (14:34)
And so is that, it's tied to money. Yeah. So it's money. Yeah.
Kaisu Koskela (14:41)
But if you think that labor markets are no longer tied to that country, even within any country, you would have people who work for foreign clients, who work with people the other side of the world. ⁓ Yet most countries are not welcoming people who bring their work that they might be working with people from around the world with to the country. They don't see that as a welcoming person in a way, because it doesn't fit the mold of the
local labor market and the protection of that and stuff. So we're in a situation where the reality is that work and location are no longer tied together, yet the government policies don't reflect that yet. It's making it very difficult. it's like, it's almost like if you take digital nomadism, which to me, ⁓ maybe I should mention that the, we talk about digital nomadism,
House Of Peregrine (15:25)
That's right.
Kaisu Koskela (15:36)
versus other types of mobility that also involves remote working. Digital nomadism, the nomading part to me is important, is that you move from A to B to C to D and you keep going in a way, ⁓ in a planned or unplanned manner. Whereas there are a lot of other ways that people combine work and travel nowadays. And by far the biggest one is probably vocation, as people will live a...
pretty sedentary life normally, but then they go from their normal lives. want to escape a northern winter, for example, and go and work from a Thai island for two months. And then they go back to their normal lives. Those people need very different things. That would not be a deposit. Yeah. Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (16:13)
So that's not a digital nomad. let's define a couple of things. So
digital nomad. What is a digital nomad?
Kaisu Koskela (16:20)
Yeah.
Well, if I actually start by saying that I would say that there's three main types and at the shorter end of stays, let's say a couple of months, are these vocationers who come from their normal sedentary lives and go and live in a... go and stay in another country and work from there for a couple of months. This is a form of tourism in a way. We're not talking about migrations yet. It's also not nomadism because let's say the next one up will be nomads who...
who continuously move. So the whole idea is that you are living your life in that movement, in that mobility. You're not stepping out of your normal life into something else and then going back. And then at the right of the other end, when we talk about migration already, is people who happen to have remote jobs and they want to take them and move to another country. ⁓ And this has now become a possibility, especially because of these digital nomad visas. Before that,
It was quite tricky. You could get a startup visa or some form of freelance visas in certain countries to go and still hold on to your remote work. Perhaps not as a remote work employee, but let's say you had your own company that was registered in US or another European country or whatnot. could still maybe find a way to live in another country, but the visas, that's what they, many of them are actually for is to...
allow you to come and claim residency and become a resident of country for longer time on the basis of having a remote job that supports you. So I would say those, those three types. Yeah. That again is not a nomad because you're not nomading. So I think in most simplistic way to put it is that a digital nomad, the digital part is that they can do their work online. The nomad part is that they are continuously on the move and they don't permanently live anywhere.
House Of Peregrine (17:56)
And that's not, yeah, and that's not a digital nomad though. Yeah, according to you, that's not, yeah.
Kaisu Koskela (18:15)
That doesn't say that they don't have residences somewhere because again, this is how the world is set up. It's almost impossible to not have a permanent residence in a country. So you normally have to have everything set up in a country. You can have it set up across different countries. Some people have this flag theorists, for example, who set up their lives so that you could have your tax residence in one place, your actual legal residence in one, your passport from one or two other places.
You can go to extremes in this, but I would say most digital nomads are registered still in their passport citizenship country because that's the easiest way to do it, but they don't actually live there. So they will be living their life in the mobility, in the movement itself.
House Of Peregrine (19:03)
Yeah. And that's a good balance between being in the construct and then having the freedom to move around the way you want to. But tell me why countries, well, first of all, I want to ask, do you find that digital nomads, so this is the fear of everybody, right? It's like consuming a country. And it's causing all sorts of debates, which I think are really interesting.
about place and the importance of people in it and how they used a place. And so what are you seeing in your research and in your own lived experience with how people consume cities? Because everyone's consuming where they live, right? They're consuming, they're contributing, they're... But how did digital nomads use a place they're at temporarily differently?
Kaisu Koskela (19:48)
Yeah,
yeah, this is a super, super interesting question. I think this also relates to current mass tourism.
Kaisu Koskela (19:57)
and what kind of visitors to any country are valuable and can also contribute. ⁓ think...
When it comes to these visas, for example, what I try to advocate with countries is that you have to think beforehand what kind of visitor do you need? Because a of them have been, you know, people say they're not very good visas because they only allow you a short stay and they treat Dijonomas as another type of tourist. Now, if you are a nation or country that doesn't have mass tourism and actually wants to attract shorter stay people,
Let's say Kazakhstan has brought out digital nomad visa for them is probably very good tool to try and attract more people to come even for short time, even for a month or two. Whereas Portugal that has a hugely successful digital nomad visa, but also suffers greatly from mass tourism. They should probably think twice if this is the type of people they want to attract on top of the tourism. Now, if they said we are trying to replace tourists with digital nomads, I think that would be a great idea, but no country is actually doing that.
House Of Peregrine (20:55)
Yeah.
Yeah. And why do countries not want digital nomads? mean, because tourism is obviously a massive business, but there's a lot of pushback against tourists in the world right now because they are not respectful or maybe the mass tourism is ruining historical sites. But it's kind of cause and effect, it seems like. And also with digital nomads, like you're encouraging people.
to treat your place as Disneyland or something. It's a consumed thing. so why would a country, ⁓ what can countries do to maybe change that? Because it is them, they are in a way encouraging this if they're not allowing contribution.
Kaisu Koskela (21:37)
Yeah.
Yeah,
I think we're in a situation where again, the similar issues, the clash back to digital nomads is largely to do with transnational gentrification issues. And gentrification, of course, this is a global crisis of rising prices and this is happening everywhere. What makes it transnational in this case is people with a much higher disposable income.
from their foreign jobs coming into a country and being able to afford to pay four times the rent than a local could pay. This in the end, and in the beginning one should say maybe, is a issue of policy again. Policy makers have not tackled this strongly enough. And now we're seeing, especially in Spain, the government is cracking down on tourism rental businesses, for example, quite a bit. And... ⁓
empty houses and things like that, that foreigners are keeping houses empty most of the year, for example, they're doing this finally, but it's like you should have done this 10 years ago, clearly. It's all about money. It's about the promise of the very fast tourism dollar and what that can bring you. But unfortunately, what we see that most of the time tourism dollar doesn't trickle down to the real people of that place.
It goes to multinational big hotel companies, for example. It goes to already wealthy people who can afford to have the empire of tourism accommodations, for example. So I think this is in the end is always going to be an issue policy makers not being brave enough to actually support the people who selected them to be their guardians.
I think something like affordable housing for people should be a basic right by now. Whereas in Lisbon, in Barcelona, also in Amsterdam, this is becoming an issue. Although the Dutch government is a lot more proactive about it and has been for a longer time, but especially in the more Mediterranean countries, have not been because they've been lured in by the fast tourism dollar without thinking about the consequences of what if everyone...
House Of Peregrine (23:46)
Yep.
Kaisu Koskela (24:02)
What if every single last grandmother that appears in a Lisbon postcard has to actually move out? Is Lisbon still the same place? Will the tourists still come? Like, it crash and burn? I think there's a restructuring of tourism in general in lot of places, which unfortunately might result in tourism only being afforded to those who really have a lot of disposable income in the future because it will become so exclusive that then other people don't necessarily get to travel anymore. ⁓ And that would be a...
House Of Peregrine (24:11)
Yeah, no.
Kaisu Koskela (24:32)
big shame, think, for global humanity in general, because I obviously believe that travel enriches your life and brings people across the globe together in a way that you can't get that understanding of different ways of life unless you have lived alongside people for a little while.
House Of Peregrine (24:49)
Yeah. So I want to get to your research. So let's dive into that a little bit. ⁓ You research global mobility and people who are nomadic. Tell me where that has, where it started and where you are now.
Kaisu Koskela (25:05)
⁓ It started from, so as I said, this came to me, whereas researchers normally go like, that's fascinating. Did your know medicine? Let me research that. I was already living this life and then this job basically fell into my lap. I happened to see it somewhere and it wouldn't leave me alone. I had already kind of abandoned academia at that point, but I was like, no, I need to apply for this job because this is...
I'm super interested in this from a perspective of research as well, as well as living the life and also the future of how we're to sort this out. How are we going to create a world where something that's already happening is not in the gray zone, but rather is celebrated and actually harnessed as a power for good. So I saw this ⁓ postdoc job and this is as far as I know, to be honest. And I know a lot of researchers actually run a research group of
researchers of digital nomadism on LinkedIn and we have about 200 other researchers there. It's a very fast growing field. But as far as I know, my job was the only job that anyone has ever seen where the university itself has thought this is an interesting new subject that should be studied. Whereas unfortunately for most researchers in this field, it's still a problem to try and get funding, especially if you mentioned digital nomadism is a sort of as a fluke.
as a blip in the universe that is going to disappear by a lot of funding agencies. They might be interested in future work as a phenomenon, but like digital nomadism is not of interest to lot of funders. They don't see it yet, ⁓ which is interesting because I think a lot of us inside of this think it's like everyone's living this, but we do have to remember that this is a very marginal way of life still, right? Compared to the majority of sensory people.
But for myself, research and the time doing has been reaffirming of my own life choices, of course, too. But it's also brought to the forefront a lot of the difficulties of living this life. Because, of course, as we said earlier, digital normals have been around forever and they have been moving around the globe for the past, let's say, 20 years quite successfully. But when you...
comes to the nitty-gritty of all the paperwork and all the legalities of how you actually should be doing it, it gets much more complex. I started a lot of my research was about the policies themselves and the policies that the governments make and why they do this and what makes them tick and why did they think that they needed a digital nomad visa, for example. ⁓ One of the major outcomes from that research was this typology that I've created that shows that
Although lot of the visas are to do with tourism and seeing digital normans as tourists, the further we go with the visas, the more they are of these ones that are more like migration visas and residency permits. In Europe, we have the Portuguese and the Spanish one, for example. So it shows that governments are slowly maturing to the idea that these could be longer term people that they could actually attract to live in their countries and they could be viewed the same as other skilled migrants.
House Of Peregrine (28:04)
Interesting.
Kaisu Koskela (28:19)
and just because they work or their clients are elsewhere in the world doesn't make any difference. So that I think is an encouraging part of it. One of the other parts that I ⁓ love discovering in this is that majority of digital nomad visas are actually open to all nationalities. So they are based on merit rather than your passport and of course passport privilege is a huge issue in this world, especially for global talent and youth who could
benefit from travel, but cannot because their passport is weak. Digital Nomad visas are offering a of a way out of that for a lot of people, provided that they manage to get a remote work, remote job somewhere that actually pays enough for them to apply for the visas. been very interesting, but I moved on from the early times when I published already on these Nomad visas and stuff, and now I'm working a more on
the digital nomad actual reception of the visas, because a lot of the visas have really not been used much. There's some of them that have just quietly disappeared from the world in general, and others that have only had a couple of hundred applications, for example, within a matter of years. Like that is not a successful The ones that have not been used, have been, lot of these visas are surprisingly
House Of Peregrine (29:33)
Why do you think that?
Why do you think that is?
Kaisu Koskela (29:43)
poorly designed. They seem to be like ad hoc quick solutions to something or government's even just trying out to see if anyone would apply for this. They modeled after migration visas in lot of ways that the application process is similar, that you need to get your criminal background checks, you need to go to an embassy in your home country to apply for it physically and then wait there. Like things like this don't
work for digital nomads who are on the move and they passport country might not be a country they visited in years. And the idea that they could just go back to let's say you have to go to fly to US to go to a US embassy and then wait up to six months to get this visa might not be a possibility for a lot of people who've already left that part of their life and are living somewhere else and don't even have the financial means to live in a US city for six months and rent a
short-term accommodations away for this visa, things like that. And it's just like, there's a lot of application processes and a lot of demands, yet they don't offer much. Many of them, the shorter ones, only offer you a chance to stay in that country for that time and then get out again and they don't actually give you anything. So they are a mismatch of migration policies that are disguised as tourist permits basically. So this is not very well made.
House Of Peregrine (31:06)
Yeah.
What are your recommendations? Like if you could design the perfect digital nomad visa or let's say, I mean, I think there's a lot of gray zones. So what you've described and then there's like, if you don't pass the language exam, if you don't, you know, all the way down from immigrant to like from a ⁓ tourist visa all the way down to an immigration visa.
Kaisu Koskela (31:13)
Yep.
tourist to immigrant. Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (31:32)
There's gray areas all the way there that seem outdated in today's world. And the paradigm is kind of, like you said, like because of the web, especially, there's this overarching network that doesn't really have respect for nation states. And so nation states are having to battle that, ⁓ or they don't have to. But so if you could rewrite some part of this based on the current, say we can't get rid of country like
Kaisu Koskela (31:36)
Yeah.
Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (32:02)
borders, what is the advice or how would you structure it?
Kaisu Koskela (32:05)
Well,
would say, yeah, there's this question of legitimacy, right? Like these people don't think a country has the rights to tell them when they can come to the country and for how long. Well, that's of course a privilege that not everyone shares, but a lot of people with strong passports and a lot of disposable income certainly do, because they can go to the country as a tourist and stay three months, even up to six months or whatnot. So why not to work remotely as well?
I actually think and advocate for countries to have several different policies, only one of them being digital nomad visa. I think the problem is currently that they have this one type of policy, which is a blimp in the universe where there might be one type of remote worker who benefits from it, but they don't harness the whole, we talk about a funnel a lot of the time in this field, like a funnel effect of like
people who come in as tourists or workationers and then stay as digital nomads for a little bit longer. And then perhaps they want to move to that country and become taxpayers and contribute to the economy and bring innovation and startup culture and all these human capital effects that remote workers from elsewhere could bring. There should be a disfunnel. So there should be different types of permits. There should be an easy walk-in tourist permit that also allows you to work.
because currently the majority of countries still ban remote working on a tourist visa. Of course, this is abused everywhere around the world. Most of us work on tourist visas everywhere in the world because it's not punishable as a crime either, but technically it's not allowed. So I'm like, why not just add that one line into your tourist visa and say, you can also do remote work while you're in the country on this visa. This has happened with actually New Zealand, UK being the latest ones.
earlier this year that brought this out and I think this is such a simple solution to something and you're also signalling that you are open to people coming in with their work and staying for the three months or whatever the tourist visa allows them. I also think residency permits should work the same way that when you have, most countries have residency permits where you tick one of the boxes being the reason that you are applying for residency and as I said
the majority of them are tied to you getting a local job. So you apply based on you got to come and work there or based on family reunifications. are the two most common ways of getting residency somewhere. Why not have a third box that says I am applying based on I have my own work, own job, own firm, own employment that pays me enough to live in your country. ⁓
But the digital Nomad visa, which is something in between, is the most elusive one. I actually, there's a project called Plumia, which is a moonshot mission of safety, with a big global insurance agency, for example. I think they are planning a thing which is called the global, I think it's called Nomad Border Pass, where it's actually more of a paid solution. And I think that might actually, in the end, be the way to go about it. Because if you want to have a visa,
or visas for people who want to keep moving continuously between different countries, but not really plan it beforehand, not apply for the visa six months beforehand, having as a paid solution might actually be the way to go. Because one of the issues we're having with this midterm kind of stays like, let's say a nomad wants to stay up to six months. So it's longer than a tourist. We accept that tourists don't pay taxes because they own in the country for a time and then they go back.
migrants should pay taxes, right? So then we have this in-betweener who doesn't really live anywhere long enough to be ⁓ technically a tax resident, although they probably are of their own citizenship country. ⁓ Why not have it as a paid solution? So you could go in under a certain permit that will be shared among several countries and you go in and then on your way out of the country, you say, I've been here now three and a half months, how much do I owe you?
And you pay a fee that is basically in lieu of taxes that you have been a contributing member to society in that way too. You don't need to necessarily get anything out of it. Most people of course, who travel continuously would be very silly not to have extensive coverage for their healthcare, for example. So I think most people should, there's market led solutions to all of these things that people use already anyway. So I think that's still missing, it should be probably a visa that is shared.
On a regional basis, could be a European white digital nomad visa, for example, that allows you to stay. The current Schengen rule is 90 days. It could be a six month visa that allows you to stay within the Schengen zone for that long on the basis that you have the disposable income to be able to support yourself while you're here and you don't actually move. Whereas a lot of the visas, the digital nomad visas now require that you get a permanent apartment. So you get a
contract for an apartment for the whole time and you live only one place which is again completely against the idea of nomadism if as a country you want to have people come into a country you probably also want to disperse them around the country and maybe they can go and explore remote regions that don't get much tourism for example but you're completely forfeiting this purpose if you make people get a permanent
apartment permanent residence while they're on the visa. So things like that should be let go. Countries should really think about the normative part of it if they want to dabble in this. I think there's a question also, do you want to as a country or would you rather just have the short-term stayers and then open up the possibility of having people migrate into your country as well?
House Of Peregrine (37:54)
Yeah. ⁓
Yeah. And I think that that's a known quantity. Like people get travelers, they get people backpacking through Europe, they understand tourists. They don't, what do they not understand about the nomadic lifestyle that would help them? ⁓ Because not a lot of, like you said, it's a very small population of people who are living this life permanently. And so what would you, understanding would you bring both advantages to the country that they could bring and also challenges? So what would you say?
Kaisu Koskela (38:32)
Yeah.
I think
the challenge is exactly this, like to do with, so the reason why a nation state system is so strongly trying to defend their borders is that the majority of our lives are now designed so that your state supports you, especially in the European context. is true that you get your healthcare, you get your social security, we look after each other. And that's based on the fact that we must pay taxes so that this system can survive, right?
So I think that's one of the things that countries also when it comes to ⁓ highly skilled migration, but also these ⁓ having longer visas and residence permits for remote workers, countries are very shy of taxing them because they seem to think that you have to, there's this competition for global talent. Of course, there's a competition for skilled migrants. A lot of countries are bringing up beneficial ⁓ taxation schemes.
Netherlands being one, was lucky to be on that for the last two years. And I thoroughly enjoyed having more of my money go to my pocket rather than to the government. But there should be a limit to that. You shouldn't think that in order to attract these people, cannot tax them at all. If your country, the way the country functions is based on tax money going to the common good and running the country, then you should tax the people as well. I think that's one thing. They're too shy on that. I think...
On the more positive side, even though I keep saying they know as they keep moving, they also location independent people. If they so choose, they can sustain if given the chance, right? If given the chance to build a future in that country. It's not a given that everyone's going to, in fact, major people are absolutely not going to do this for the rest of their lives. Many people are probably in search of their next home, at least for a couple of years and stuff. So to
approach them only as transient people who are only good for that tourism dollar is a big miss as well. These are, yes, they're highly skilled, very connected international people, a lot of innovation, lot of contacts to also bring to the local population and local youth that could be missing out because there's a lot of countries now that could benefit also from this from the
House Of Peregrine (40:41)
It's a missed opportunity.
Kaisu Koskela (41:00)
way that let's say all your youth is living in the country because they don't see a future there or they don't see any exciting opportunities. If you have a sizeable remote working community from abroad who a lot of whom do work in a startup scene or do work independently as freelancers and are open to all sorts of ideas and have the connections. If those come into that location and can engage with the local youth and local talent as well.
the sky's the limit really, can build like all sorts of new Silicon valleys basically around the world with this idea. So it just needs the right type of policy to allow for that kind of stuff to happen because one of the big problems as well with the current visas, the digital numbered visas is that they block any access to local labor market. There's very few exceptions to this, the Spanish one being the most notable where you can actually have
a certain percentage of your income come also from Spanish clients. You can also employ Spanish people, whereas most of them completely ban you from employing anyone local, which makes no sense to me, because if the same person was in another country, they could remote employ a local person. So why can't you do it while you're in the country? So I think that all protectionism of local labour markets is really slowing the progress down as well.
House Of Peregrine (42:24)
Yeah, it's a bit misguided and maybe a bit outdated. And I love this, what you're saying. when we talk about digital nomads and people who move, we also have to talk about compliance. And so in your research, you told me something really interesting in the pre-interview about the majority of people want to be in compliance. They just can't.
Kaisu Koskela (42:26)
Yeah.
Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (42:45)
So with taxes, with visas, like you said, you're already out of compliance if you bring your laptop and you sit at a cafe and make money. Like that's a weird thing to have, yeah.
Kaisu Koskela (42:51)
Yeah, as a tourist already, as a tourist, if you check your
emails, you're already not in compliance. Yes. And this was the, what I said about the tourist business, for example, there's such a simple solution to this. I know this is not on top of agendas for countries who struggle with a lot of issues to add that one line, but like these are easy solutions to allow something that's already happening to get it out of the legal gray zone because there's so much gray zone.
House Of Peregrine (42:58)
Yeah. Yeah, so.
Kaisu Koskela (43:19)
It's a situation where digital norma- like living your life as a digital norma is not illegal, but it's almost near impossible to do it 100 % legally. And this is something I've found from, let's say, my auto-ethnographic approach to my research of having traveled the whole time too and being a remote worker while doing my research. The amount of paperwork, because I had promised to my university that I would do because I was employed as a local person in Netherlands.
House Of Peregrine (43:30)
Yeah.
Kaisu Koskela (43:49)
And I was also a tax resident there during my research. And I promised to them we're going to do everything completely by the book. And I didn't know there was going to be this tricky, but like the amount of paperwork that you have to do, even as a European within European Union, going to work somewhere. It's a lot of paperwork and a lot of regulation that not every country knows about. So then you are explaining something to someone who should know about it and doesn't even has never heard of it. And certainly I've been asking.
people I meet on the road, how much they know about this. And there's a big part of them, including employers, who do not realize all the work that actually should go into making sure that everything is done by the book. And I think actually this is a big part of why there is this movement of ⁓ being called back to the office, because during Corona times, because a lot of people are like, but I was an in...
House Of Peregrine (44:38)
Yeah, and so.
Kaisu Koskela (44:49)
a full employer, because a lot of these problems are especially for people who have employment contracts, who are full-time employees, because employers in many countries have a lot of labor laws that tie them to making sure that their employees have certain standards of work and rights and things like that. And a lot of people I meet that are like, during COVID times, was no problem. My employee let me go anywhere I wanted to, to do whatever.
I think they have smartened up since then. were several years in between where they slowly started to figure out the HR team slowly started to figure out like, hold on, if our employees there were meant to pay, for example, for their health care, but they're not in this country, are we still meant to pay for this? And the answer might be yes. But then if you pay for your health care, for your employees' health care in Thailand, then you are making a permanent establishment there and like all these risks for the employers.
And that's why they've been so shy for letting you go anywhere for more than a short vacation maybe, because they actually now figured out there's lot of legalities to this where they could be liable of having to pay taxes of one of the employees working in that country.
House Of Peregrine (46:07)
Yeah, every country has their own paradigm with health care, with workers' rights, with, yeah, it's a good example is I think a couple of companies got really, US companies in the Netherlands got really a lot in trouble because they would go bankrupt or they would have hiring, they would just lay off people and that's not allowed in the Netherlands. So it was just like, so Dutch employees who were working here were like, sorry, you can't fire me.
Kaisu Koskela (46:12)
Yeah.
Yes, exactly.
Yep.
House Of Peregrine (46:34)
That's not how it works. I'm
Kaisu Koskela (46:35)
Yep.
House Of Peregrine (46:36)
on a permanent contract. And a permanent contract doesn't exist in the US. That's not a thing. It doesn't even exist. And so who has precedence? And so it gets into these different paradigms that different countries are... It's cultural.
Kaisu Koskela (46:40)
Exactly.
Yes.
And this certainly applies to, yes,
it certainly applies to the social security, for example, which is very strong in Europe, but not so much elsewhere. A lot of these new visas require that if you're an employee, you have to prove that your employer is paying for your social security fees. Whereas your employer is like, ⁓ I don't pay for them even now. So why would I stop paying them then? And this stops a lot of people from being able to get these visas as well. They, yeah, this is a new type of internet.
House Of Peregrine (47:15)
Yep.
Kaisu Koskela (47:21)
nationalization that we really haven't figured out yet.
House Of Peregrine (47:25)
Yeah, it's a deepening level of internationalization because when we had people who were expats for a few years or they were moving with their job, it was easy to kind of build a container. This is where we see the 30 % ruling here in the Netherlands or different green cards in the US. And I'm sure there's different ones that I'm unaware of. But that handled it, right? It put a bandaid on it. But if you want to move around permanently or stay permanently,
Kaisu Koskela (47:45)
Yeah.
or stay permanently. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
House Of Peregrine (47:52)
And that's a gray zone that I see and I'm actually in is like, I don't know how long I'll stay. It's permanent non-permanence, right? And so I don't have a path. I pay taxes here, I have to renounce one citizenship. My kids have been here their whole lives.
Kaisu Koskela (47:57)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Right. So it's almost like they would
want you to decide beforehand how you're going to live your life and where you're going to live and where you're going to move to next. And then it might become easier because you were always one step ahead. But this is a situation where you as the person doing the mobility is one step behind. Basically, it might be that you already burned a bridge that you didn't even realize that you burned and you cannot have the future that you actually envision. It's very, very tricky.
House Of Peregrine (48:13)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And not
only that, like they claim your business. So like you have to start your, if you're in the country, you have to have your company in the country you're living in where you don't even have rights to live. Like I could be deported, but my company has to stay here. That's insane. that, as you learn these things, as you're doing them, actually, you're learning them as you go. And so, like you said, you're burning bridges, you're making mistakes, you're doing your best to be in compliance, but it's like, it is nearly impossible to,
Kaisu Koskela (48:40)
Yeah.
⁓ yes, okay, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (49:03)
And then what I've found is you start living in the gray zone and so everything becomes a question, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but constantly living with this, especially I have kids. So I'm like, are we going to be deported?
Kaisu Koskela (49:09)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly. Don't you think it adds a
level of unconscious stress to your lifestyle when you're actually not doing anything wrong, but then you end up kind of being in the wrong? And this is something that I see with nomads too when I ask them about it, the people who are aware of all the regulations and stuff and how they should be doing things, but they are not doing because one of the justifications is that if a country was concerned about me working here on a tourist visa, for example, then they would regulate it somehow.
House Of Peregrine (49:23)
Absolutely.
Kaisu Koskela (49:45)
And it's true, no country does, hardly any country does. Let's currently with Thailand, for example, they came up with a new, it's called destination Thailand visa, which is the closest we have at the moment, I would say to a real digital nomad visa. Since they came up with that, there's a lot of reports from the borders where people are being stopped, even their laptops haven't looked at, are you going to work in this country? This could easily happen in the US now too, like that if they took this as one of their pain points as well, because they are checking people's...
tech. But yeah, especially in Thailand, you're getting a lot of questions now of like, you here? Will you work while you're here? And at that point, when you feel like you're not doing anything wrong, but you have to straight out lie to your border official and say, no, sir, I'm just here to see your beautiful land. It becomes a thing where it's like, why do I have to? Why do I have to? I'm not doing anything wrong in a way, but I am. And therefore I get stressed and I feel guilty about this.
But the solutions are just not there yet. I don't know if they will be and when they will be either. ⁓ I'm not super hopeful of these things like this being sorted out anytime soon, because it would need such a huge haul of systems. And I think that's why I say that if somehow this was moved more to the regional level, the regions amongst themselves sorted it out first, then we might have some hope. But if you had to have
House Of Peregrine (50:47)
Yeah, and that's.
Kaisu Koskela (51:12)
agree multilateral agreements with every single country around the world about a new distribution of taxation money, for example, you know, we're going to be waiting here 100 years at least.
House Of Peregrine (51:23)
Yeah. that's advice I give people often is, yeah, like don't assume you're as free as you're like, you can fly anywhere and you can work on the internet. That's your freedom. Like it's depending on your passport, of course, but that's not actually true in the way you live your life. And in some ways, I think it's actually better to be naive.
Kaisu Koskela (51:46)
Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (51:52)
Like if you know all the rules, it will really limit. Yeah. Or be extremely well-versed and plan out. Like I often tell people like, go to someone who's really, there's not a lot of these people, but I'm like strategic, be strategic. Go to someone about your money. Cause money is what really is the controlling factor, which I find very sad. But it's like, go to someone who can help you be strategic. I want to live here when I have kids. I want to live here when I did it. I want to live here and really plan it out or.
Kaisu Koskela (51:54)
like ignorance is bliss.
House Of Peregrine (52:23)
Be ignorant.
Kaisu Koskela (52:24)
Be willing to wing
it and accept the uncomfortableness of living in a bit of a grey zone, you know? ⁓ It's currently like, personally how I would look. Yeah, it has a lot of stress. Yeah, it's not the solution forever. But then as soon as you start setting up those solutions forever...
House Of Peregrine (52:34)
which has a lot of stress.
Kaisu Koskela (52:45)
you're restricting your mobility again or your freedom to make other choices. And that's where I personally struggle because I truly, I would love to be able to say that I'm 100 % location independent, but this is not true because even
regulations of like now I am after having moved my tax residency from Netherlands back to Finland again I'm still tied by the rules of like I'm meant to then stay in Finland for certain amount of days out of the year which I do not grant it and in the end I know that if I told them I am not there it would be ruled so that I would still pay my taxes to Finland because everyone in the end has a default country
That will be the country where you will be tax liable. This doesn't apply for US because you are one of the two countries where taxation there works differently, but ⁓ it's based on citizenship, whereas everywhere else is based on something else. And I cannot be not a tax resident anywhere. That's not an option. Even if I never stepped foot in Finland again, but I'm never anywhere else where I would be taxed either.
House Of Peregrine (53:53)
Yeah, you. Yeah.
Kaisu Koskela (54:00)
It would default back to Finland in my case, for example.
House Of Peregrine (54:05)
Yeah, so that's true, right? You can't be stateless. No one can, not just you.
Kaisu Koskela (54:08)
No, no. And this is true for majority of
Europeans at least. You can't just denounce. I can denounce like, let's say in last two years, I was tax resident in Netherlands and then I had to tell the Finnish government, now I'm going to be tax resident here. And I had to prove that. And then I can be tax resident somewhere else. But I can't just say, I'm leaving the country. I will no longer pay taxes here. They say fine, but where are you paying your taxes then? And that's, that's the point when they relinquish the control. And this is true of majority of. ⁓
House Of Peregrine (54:33)
Wow.
Kaisu Koskela (54:37)
of European countries for sure you will. And that's why the solution is always easiest to just have your home countries that in my case, I'm of course in one of the countries with the highest taxation anywhere. So it's not beneficial to me, but honestly, the the easiness of it is much more important for me. It adds to my location independence when I don't have to think about it.
House Of Peregrine (54:59)
Yeah, and that's a
Yeah. And that's what I ⁓ really think that this is an advantage. Having stressed out people living in your country is not a good idea, even for a few days. And so I wish that countries would see that even with migration or immigrants or expats or digital nomads or even tourists. It's not a good idea energetically, economically to have stressed out people who don't know the rules. That's not a good thing.
Kaisu Koskela (55:10)
Yeah. No.
Yeah.
certainly not.
House Of Peregrine (55:31)
And I find this among people who have lived in the Netherlands for ⁓ five, six, seven, eight years is they're stressed out and they're transmitting that into their kids that are transmitting that into the classrooms, into the jobs. ⁓ And so I really find these gray areas and getting used to living in a gray area and just pushing your way through. It's a cool skill. It makes you feel like a CIA agent all the time, but it is also, I don't think places should want people who are doing this.
Kaisu Koskela (55:43)
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (56:01)
it's not beneficial to place is my.
Kaisu Koskela (56:02)
No, and then you add to
it in places like Netherlands to the very difficult housing situation where you a lot of the time in a gray zone in that too, because you just lost your place and you don't have a new address yet that you have to be registered and someone's after you. And I personally found it very stressful for the past two years trying to balance life when I was physically not there most of the time and was reporting to the government saying where I was and the questions they would ask me afterwards. I was interrogating about this all the time as if I was
really doing something wrong and in fact at the same time I was welcomed into the country as a skilled migrant and it was it was not at odds it didn't actually add up at all yeah
House Of Peregrine (56:42)
It's weird, yeah, it's
Yeah, but also I think population is on the decline most places. And so I find it very interesting. I will find it very interesting to watch. I'm interested to see how your research goes on actually, like you're saying, people being a resource that they're trying to get and not just highly skilled, it's everyone. Everyone needs to keep society going. And this is an age old problem. mean, this is an age old problem.
Kaisu Koskela (56:57)
Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (57:12)
in wars and everywhere, human capital is always valuable and for different jobs. But with the internet and the rise of digital work and ⁓ AI even, I really think that this issue and modernizing it and making it so people can stay in compliance and also ⁓ move freely, more freely because that's where work happens and values being created, I really think your work's gonna become
much, much more important than even it is now. ⁓ Yeah, is there anything else you want to leave us with? I'm mindful of time, but is there advice you would give someone who's wanting to maybe live fully nomadic life? Is there advice you would give them?
Kaisu Koskela (57:46)
I think so too. Yeah.
⁓ Personally, I always found this easy to start living this lifestyle. It has felt like a true me, as you said. It's maybe in some of us it is and some it's not. I would say don't get stuck on this idea of becoming a digital nomad just because it's trendy and it's all over Instagram and stuff.
Find your own way of, if you have the possibility to do remote work, to find your own way to introduce at least some location independence into your life. I think for the majority of the world's population, the security they get from a permanent home, permanent house,
groups of friends, hobbies, whatever, is far too important to let go of because to live a fully nomadic life is no joke. There's a lot of sacrifices you also make. I happily make them, but I don't actually think this suits the majority of the world's population. So find your own way of combining some location independence for part of the year, for example, to your life, rather than try and...
absolutely renounce everything, sell all your possessions and to set off because you think that's gonna make you free. You will soon find out that freedom is not just because you have a smaller backpack and nothing else, that's not freedom. If you have a lot of other, let's say paperwork, tax man, whatever in your head, like nagging you about it. So find your own path, own journey within this world of opportunities that I do
House Of Peregrine (59:28)
That's really good advice. So I always say run, run towards something, not away from something. ⁓ And what advice would you, what's your final advice for countries who are trying to, I would say modernize, I hate the word modernize, but like meet the population of people who are highly skilled or working in general. How do countries, what is your top advice for those countries that are grappling with this?
Kaisu Koskela (59:32)
Yes, that's it.
Yeah.
This links
very nicely to what you said about being welcome in a country and that would make a much better, you know, energy in the place in the first place. It's about, you should think that if you are welcomed in a country, but also that you're offering people the possibility of a future there, because no one is going to start giving their best to you or providing, you know, their human capital for you if they don't see any possibility of a future in that country.
Even if they decide not to take in the long term, even if they don't stay forever, having that possibility is very important. And to design the policies so that they're in a continuum of where you can step to the next ladder and you become more and more integrated into the country if you so choose to do. I think that's very important because otherwise, if you're already from get-go blocking any possibilities or future and you say you can stay six months and then you have to get out and you can absolutely not...
apply for another permit in the meanwhile, you are completely cutting out any chance of that person wanting to contribute anything more to your country than you know the quick buck of their disposable income.
House Of Peregrine (1:01:05)
So they're creating people who are using, like consuming and throwing away the experience.
Kaisu Koskela (1:01:10)
Exactly, yeah, that was a very good
point you made about the you're consuming, but then you could also be contributing. And yeah, if you want to have both, ideally, you have to provide for both for the possibility of both of them.
House Of Peregrine (1:01:24)
Yeah.
Yeah, I call it generative relationships, right? Like you want to make a generative relationship with these people instead of a consumer-based relationship with these people.
Kaisu Koskela (1:01:33)
Yes,
very good. I'm gonna steal that, I'll just write that down. Yeah, yeah.
House Of Peregrine (1:01:38)
Don't steal it.
We're all, this is a, you don't have to steal it. I'm giving it to you. Yeah, good. But it's, yeah, I see it too and I feel it I'm living it in a different way than you are. But I do feel that, yeah, that hopelessness that comes when a place doesn't seem to want to let you contribute in the way that you'd like to and also provide a path that makes sense that you can't just say, no, that's kind of abusive. I can't do that.
Kaisu Koskela (1:01:41)
Yeah, thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah, it leaves marginal
people who, you know, then give up on contributing anywhere really if you don't, yeah, if you don't allow them.
House Of Peregrine (1:02:13)
Yeah.
Yeah, cool. I love your work. I love what you're all about. I'm so glad I got to talk to you today about this. And ⁓ yeah, it's more than digital nomadism. think you're speaking to a larger human impulse and also this moment we're in that we can't go back from, I don't think. The internet's not going to shut off anytime soon. AI is getting more. People are wanting to go to a place that fits their values for different seasons. And so I think we're only going to see
more of this and I hope in a more humane way for both place and people. I really admire the work you're doing and I want to keep up and maybe we'll have you on again in the future to update us on what's going on.
Kaisu Koskela (1:02:54)
Absolutely.
Yeah. No, thank you for having me. Very important conversations. lot of these things that we should be talking about more because the world is open already and it is already happening and it's like just because we try and ignore it and think that we can somehow put the genie back in the box, it's not the way to go forward.
House Of Peregrine (1:03:17)
Yeah. Thank you so much. And thank you everyone for joining us today on the House of Peregrine podcast. If you'd like to find out about Kaisu's work and everything she's up to, we will put her information in the show notes. And please feel free to join us at HouseofPeregrine.com where you can find guides and all sorts of stuff about living a location independent life or living internationally. Thanks so much, Kai Su, and we'll see you again soon.
Kaisu Koskela (1:03:41)
Thank
you.