Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

The majority of the subjects Bruder speaks to while reporting for this project are people in their sixties or older, most of whom are unable to enter traditional retirement for a myriad of reasons. Throughout the book, Bruder reviews the history of retirement and social safety nets in order to pinpoint where the older nomadic community originated and why so many senior citizens are choosing to live as workampers and van dwellers.

Aging Americans are encountering an unprecedented desiccation of the middle class. Bruder notes, “Many of the workers I met in the Amazon camps were part of a demographic that has grown with alarming speed: downwardly mobile older Americans” (Chapter 3, Page 62). Financial security, once promised by social security as well as employer-based pensions, has grown more difficult for older Americans to achieve, particularly after the Great Recession of 2008. Many saw their retirement and savings, as well as any assets they owned like houses or cars, evaporate during this time. This leaves a class of people without financial security of any kind, unable to receive support from their similarly struggling friends and family. This leaves aging Americans vulnerable to homelessness as well as exploitation by large corporations seeking cheap, temporary labor, which is all the more disturbing given the physical demands of these jobs.

Bruder tells the story of many different nomads in order to prove that those who are struggling financially typically suffered misfortune or trauma. They are poor not because they are lazy or bad workers, but because the economic system has worked against them. For example, the dissipation of private pensions and cuts to social security have been justified using the claim that lazy older Americans are taking advantage of other people’s money. Yet this does not account for inflation, wage stagnation, and other economic issues that have made it difficult for American workers to save money for retirement. This means that someone like Linda can work extremely hard for her entire life, yet still be unable to afford to retire or buy a home.

Nomadland repeatedly returns to the idea of social safety nets in a number of ways. For example, Swankie Wheels brings Bruder into her camping “vanily” to help her get used to van dwelling. Linda and her friends work together as campground hosts to support one another while making money. The Rubber Tramp Rendezvous is an enormous gathering of nomads who offer each other help, services, knowledge, and skills to help each other thrive. This is a subtle argument in favor of social safety nets and security to help those in need, making it clear that human beings want, and in fact need, to share resources and knowledge with one another in order to survive.

Although Bruder’s book mainly focuses on Linda’s life as well as the lives of other nomads, she cannot tell their stories in full without also diving into the companies that profit off of their labor and the economic shift that has left them constantly dealing with instability. In other words, in order to understand someone like Linda, the reader has to also understand the powerful entities who take advantage of her labor.

Companies like Amazon hire workampers precisely because they work hard, arrive with their own housing, have a cheerful attitude, and are so drained from their shifts that they are unlikely to organize or unionize. In addition, because workampers are seasonal employees, they do not stay long enough to complain, be given benefits, or a meaningful wage. In other words, by framing themselves as a liberating and exciting employment opportunity, Amazon and companies like them take advantage of the disenfranchised in order to achieve their record-breaking profits.

The reader sees this play out in numerous workamper gigs such as campground hosting. People like Linda and Silvianne are sold on the idea of working for as little as $9/hour for more than 40 hours per week because California Land Management made it seem as though she would merely be camping and enjoying the wilderness. In fact, Linda and Silvianne work far more hours than they are paid for doing physically demanding work. Their hours and wages can be cut without warning. The hiring organization’s refusal to take responsibility for their seasonal workers leaves Linda and Silvianne vulnerable and living in a prolonged state of precarity (which makes the members of the newly minted “precariat” class).

The majority of workampers are aging senior citizens who may not be as physically fit as younger workers. Bruder discovers this for herself when working as a part of the sugar beet harvest in North Dakota. Despite her younger age and relative physical fitness, she finds it difficult to make it through her 12-hour shifts without aggravating old injuries. The reader gets to experience this work via Bruder’s narration, making corporate exploitation all the clearer.