The Baffler #77 Jan. 2025

On the morning of November 5, the day of the 2024 presidential election, the algorithm delivered me the promise of escape. Titled “Here’s How to Buy Citizenship in Another Country,” the article lamented the global character of climate change and the fact that “political turmoil is upending longstanding democracies.” Despite the polycrisis’s indifference to borders, the author suggested I might be happier elsewhere. One can achieve citizenship by investment in Turkey or Dominica, I read, and resident status is obtainable by “Golden Visas” in locales ranging from Spain to New Zealand for a minimum investment of a quarter of a million dollars.

For those looking to expatriate on a budget, Fodor’s Travel suggested the life of a digital nomad. An attractive prospect if you don’t mind jacking up the rents in Condesa or Neukölln—though American males like myself should worry about being mistaken for a Passport Bro, those members of the American manosphere abroad taking advantage of remote work in order to perform “dating market arbitrage” in poorer locales where feminism has supposedly failed to take root. In “Expatriates,” Adrian Nathan West argues that this phenomenon repackages sex tourism as glossy personal accomplishment. Sex workers themselves have a demystified, materialist understanding of their work, as Jessica Van Meir writes, reporting on their experiences trying to stay put and survive turbulent economies and rampant gentrification in Colombia and Guatemala. Elsewhere in Latin America, Jared Olson reports on internal migrants forced to pull up stakes throughout Mexico, caught between criminals, paramilitaries, and a frequently indifferent government.

Delusional is perhaps the best word to describe the Japanese state, according to Dylan Levi King. His essay describes a changing Tokyo at a moment in which the yen is low, the population is declining, and citizens, expats, and guest workers alike cling to the country’s past rather than face Japan’s uncertain future. Alex Cocotas considers how the cosmopolitan creative class has exhausted their bohemian version of Berlin, and Chris Crowley details how Australia’s willingness to join the Global War on Terror led to a flat white-swilling, coked-up invasion of Williamsburg from down under at the peak of trés cool Brooklyn. Elsewhere in globalized kitchens, an Argentinian working in a London restaurant when the Falklands War breaks out takes revenge on a sadistic cook in Rodrigo Fresán’s short story. Leaving doesn’t always mean getting away, a sentiment echoed by Dorothee Elmiger, who describes her Swiss hometown’s Silvesterchlaus celebration and its apocryphal roots.

Expatriate, despite its urbane connotations, simply means someone living abroad. Spies technically fit the bill, per Ann Neumann’s account of a reunion of veterans of a military intelligence post in the Horn of Africa; as do medically minded humanitarians, some of whom may reconsider the work of Doctors Without Borders, given Mary Turfah’s critique. Those Americans who feel like they woke up on November 6 citizens in another country might also claim the title (though Baffler readers were less likely to be surprised)—no need then to uproot yourself to venture somewhere foreign and join the Gringo Worldwide.