We Come, We Gentrify, We Don’t Learn the Language | by Constance Rowan | Jun, 2025
2 min read
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The uncomfortable truth about why the rest of the world doesn’t want us anymore
Jun 2, 2025
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I used to think that if things got too dark in America, too dangerous, too authoritarian, too fascist-curious, I’d leave. Pack a bag, book a flight, find some cute apartment in Spain or maybe Montreal, and live my best low-cost-of-living life, eating olives on a balcony and not getting murdered for existing.
Adorable, right?
Turns out, the rest of the world has been paying attention. And they’re not exactly excited to host the Great American ‘Freedom’ Migration.
It’s Not Just the Billionaires
Yes, billionaires are buying up farmland in Patagonia and villas in Lisbon, as if the game Monopoly were a real thing, because it is. But blaming them alone is a convenient cop-out.
The real damage? It’s being done by middle-class remote workers, early retirees, and influencers with Dad’s Amex. People like us, the supposed “normal” Americans, who show up in someone else’s country with zero plan to integrate, learn, or contribute. We arrive with an inflated currency, colonizer swagger, and a vague notion that things will work out cuz we’re ‘the good guys’.
We come.
We gentrify.
We don’t learn the language.
No One Wants to Host Your Remote Job
Let’s talk about the Digital Nomad Fantasy, the idea that if you can work from your laptop, you can live anywhere. Spain, Portugal, Mexico, and Georgia (the country, not the state) are all marketed as budget utopias where your USD stretches far.
Reality check: remote workers are actively screwing up local economies.
In Lisbon, locals are being priced out of their own neighborhoods. In Mexico City, digital nomads are driving up rents while refusing to learn the local language. And in places like Bali, entire towns have been reshaped around the needs of foreign workers, who often carry yoga mats and crypto wallets. The backlash is here, it’s justified, and it’s getting louder.
It’s cute how we thought being able to work from a cafe made us global citizens. Turns…
