Review of the book Nomadland: surviving America in the twenty-first century

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Journal of Gerontological Social Work

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Review of the book Nomadland: surviving America in the twenty-first century

Peter A. Kindle

To cite this article: Peter A. Kindle (2019): Review of the book Nomadland:�surviving America�in�the�twenty-first�century, Journal of Gerontological Social Work, DOI:

10.1080/01634372.2019.1575136

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01634372.2019.1575136

Published online: 30 Jan 2019.

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BOOK REVIEW

Review of the book Nomadland: surviving America in the twenty- ﬁ rst century

Nomadland: surviving America in the twenty-ﬁrst century, by Bruder, Jessica, New York, NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 2017, 320 pp. $16.95, ISBN: 978-0-393- 24931-6

Traveling over 15,000 miles in a three year period, the journalist Jessica Bruder takes the reader inside the partially hidden world of vankamping–an escape from the oppressive expectations of middle class America into a wheeled frontier. As a journalist, Bruder is concerned with understanding the lived experiences of subcultures hidden in dark economic corners. Vankampers qualify and are primarily white seniors living on meager incomes due to a late-in-life divorce, spousal death, job loss, or illness. This hidden and mobile lifestyle is virtually unknown among the general public, and Bruder explores what their existence might mean for aging and the American economy. Part travelogue and part exposé, Bruder’s accessible storytelling may have done the social work profes- sion a great service by bringing their existence to public notice. The public image of RV camping as a recreational pursuit does not do justice to the marginalization experienced by vankampers. The foreclosure crisis following the 2008 Great Recession erased retirement savings and home ownership for many. “They have unshackled themselves from rent and mortgages as a way to get by”(p. xiii), but they want more than to survive, they want hope, and there is hope in the road. “The last free place in America is a parking spot” (p. xiv), but the question remains, how can social welfare services reach people constantly on the move?

Bruder’s chief protagonist in this travelogue of stories and delightful characters is Linda who steers her camper Squeeze Inn from U.S. Forest Service campsites working on contract to keep the campsites clean to an Amazon Camperforce of vandwellers doing seasonal work while living on wheels. As opposed to recreational campers, vandwellers areworkampers, modern day nomads moving from place to place to work short-term, seasonal jobs. At most they can hope for a few months of steady employment, a free parking space, and utility hookups. Sometimes only a stipend is provided. At worst they face wage hour work violations, excessive regimentation of every minute of work, and physical exhaustion.

Bruder calls workampers the downwardly mobile older America, a growing segment of the marginalized who are inadequately served by place-based social services. It is a reversal of retirement security and the American Dream. Employment in the over 65 age group is up 60% in the last decade. Some are calling these trends the end of retirement. Linda’s dream is to build a passive solar house or Earthship for herself. Her story ends with acquiring aﬁve acre spread between deserts in southern Arizona.

Many vandwellers found inspiration in the post-divorce choices of Bob Wells who started CheapRVLiving.com.“I am convinced that living in a car, van or RV is by far the cheapest possible way to live long-term” (p. 76) and can lead to more autonomy, less anxiety, and more freedom. To Bob, vandwelling is not a short-term condition awaiting the return of normal times, but a reaction to economic and environmental upheavals that are the new normal. It is a response to a fraying social order, and the construction of

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a new parallel world on wheels that depends on the dissemination of information online.

Workers on Wheels announces and recruits workampers for seasonal work, and Workamper Newsprovides useful tips such as the process for easily obtaining an oﬃcial address (South Dakota, Texas, and Florida are preferred) or access to cheap medications and medical services in Mexico. Vankampers often speak to Bruder about their exciting and innovative lifestyle, but they are poor, extremely poor. Travelers or vankampers are

“conscientious objectors from a broken, corrupting social order” (p. 204) with no interest in conforming again to social norms. They say they have chosen this life.

Many say they are never going back. Rarely do they admit that they have few alternatives.

Bob, for example, knows that his end game has already been determined. When he can no longer drive, he plans aﬁnal walk in the desert with his gun.

Bruder was much impressed by the annual Gathering Place in Quartzsite, Arizona, after the Christmas/Amazon rush is over. Vankampers tend to be iconoclastic, but they do need one another. Snowbirds and survivalists, vendors and hucksters join in a crazy mixing pot of humanity on wheels. Quartzite grows from 4,000 to 40,000 during this time with lots of temporary jobs available for the vandwellers. Diﬀerent social classes mix easily as recreational vehicle vacationers join the throng in the 70 RV campsites, but many more on the adjacent federal land. Neighborhoods develop and diﬀerent tribes evolve. It is a senior–

dominated scene, but great tolerance is a prevailing sentiment. Swapmeets abound.“We don’t have to live wherever people are supposed to live–that’s what it’s all about”(p. 129). In the 1980s over a million would visit, but now it is more like 300,000. Such gatherings are ready-made opportunities for social work to reach vankampers.

Bruder joins the vankampers for a short time, living in hervan Halenand joining the subculture. Sleeping on the street, eating from a makeshift table resting on aﬁve gallon paint bucket that also serves as a privy, Bruder takes the reader with her in the cultural and emotional transition from middle class to vankamper. Shorts stints harvesting beets in North Dakota and with the Amazon CamperForce near Fort Worth gave Bruder a taste of the harsh work conditions. She is not a fan of the CamperForce:

[T]he Amazon encampments began to seem more and more like microcosms of a national catastrophe. The RV parks were jammed with workers who had fallen a long, long way from the middle-class comforts they had always taken for granted. These were standard-bearers for every economic misadventure to aﬄict Americans in recent decades (p. 61).

Bruder began her investigation into vankamping wondering how someone with an associate’s degree could raise two daughters and arrive at 65 years of age without a house or a job. After three years, she likened the vankampers to anindicator species – those that “signal a much larger [and dangerous] shift in an ecosystem” (p. 247); an ecosystem that has changed due to income inequality and stagnant wages for 117 million Americans since the 1970s.

Not being a social worker, Bruder may have missed a more telling interpretation of the vankamping lifestyle. A personally devastating financial event late in life robbed these vankampers of most of what makes up the American Dream, and can be interpreted as a telling critique of a society indifferent to their plight. They are not sharing in a rising standard of living withfinancial security and upward mobility. They have little materially to pass on to their children, but what they do have is an inner strength and stubborn commitment to being self-sufficient. This determination tofind a bit of autonomy in a demanding social order is a strong foundation upon which social workers might help vankampers to build a safer and more resilient senior lifestyle. They have found a way to reduce their needs to the minimum, to live on the edges of a society often ignorant of their existence. They are 21^st century

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frontiersmen and frontierswomen, stepping away from a social order that has not worked for them to create a new way of life for themselves. Gerontological social workers need to be aware of the vankamping trend in order to be prepared to serve those aging out of driving as well as to serve their families who may be left behind.

At her best, Bruder approaches an ethnographic understanding of vankamping, but this is not an academic study. Her 248 endnotes contain no citations from the academic literature, preferring websites, newspapers, and magazines. In a classroom setting, Nomadland would be most useful as a type of case study for a community practice class or policy class. Even undergraduates will ﬁnd it accessible. The challenges of helping to meet the needs of this mobile subculture would make for a good student project; however, I believe this book is most useful for practicing social workers as a window into a growing subculture not previously on our radar. In the 1930s, the Works Project Administration paid photographers to document the economic depriva- tion as a means of encouraging public support for new welfare programs. Perhaps Bruder’s insights can help to provide the similar encouragement today.

Peter A. Kindle University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD [email protected] http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8479-8125