When Alex Holder fled London’s stressful work culture and hard edges for a family-friendly life in Lisbon, Portugal, she couldn’t believe her luck. Living in a light-filled apartment in a beautiful building in a street with no cars, she appreciated the more balanced approach to life she had found in the Portuguese capital, along with the lower cost of living.
But after a few years she began to grow increasingly uneasy. Looking around, she noticed an increase in people like her who were enjoying the cheaper costs of living in Portugal, but who might also be making life harder for locals. “There was just this growing awareness that something doesn’t feel right – there’s this wealth gap growing. And perhaps I’m part of it,” she tells Helen Pidd. Was she pushing up prices and helping change the culture of the place she loved?
Lauren Razavi runs a thinktank that explores the future of migration, citizenship and borders. She explains how countries have sought to attract remote workers, digital expats and digital nomads – and what has changed.
