Digital Nomads, Bordering and the Making of Transnational Gentrification in Mexico City: Insights from fieldwork

'Gringo, go home! was among the chants heard during the demonstration in Mexico City on 4 July 2025, where local residents protested against rising housing costs and the perceived gentrification of central neighbourhoods such as Roma and Hipódromo–Condesa. 

Within this context, the mobility of migrants from the Global North is often framed as both the driver and visible agent of urban change, reshaping the material and symbolic dimensions of the city through everyday practices of consumption and identity formation – a process commonly analysed as transnational gentrification. 

In this Migration Seminar, PhD researcher Mares moves beyond ‘just’ problematizing migration and instead re-reads transnational gentrification through the combined analytical lens of migration, city-making and border-making scholarship. It examines the interplay between migrant mobility and emplacement, and the global and local dynamics that both shape – and are shaped by – the historical and institutional trajectories of cities. 

Based on ethnographic research conducted in Roma and Hipódromo–Condesa neighborhoods, the presentation explores how US digital nomads experience bordering processes and how these shape their relationship to urban change. It analyses how built environments, market-oriented policies and migration frameworks structure and legitimize their mobility and emplacement and, in turn, their role in the (re)production of gentrification.