Lonely Teleworkers
Remote work has become easier in the past years. For some employees, working fewer days at the office means fewer days of travelling, and they choose a longer travelling distance and settle in cheaper, greener, more spacious peripheral locations. However, there is a drawback to that spatial reorganization. Living away from the bustle of the big city and the buzz of the office can make employees lonely.
In this project, we visit several peripheral co-working spaces, and interview workers on their motivations to work at the space, in the light of the spatio-temporal configuration of the rest of their lives, their migration history, and their wellbeing. For comparison, we also interview workers in the same areas that do not seem to use the space.
The areas of Friesland, where students have previously done field research on coworking spaces for us, and Groningen, form a logical setting for this research: sufficiently far away from the Randstad core area of the Netherlands, yet at a distance where a trip to an office in the Randstad is still feasible, at travel times of 2-2½ hours.
Martin said
The Fellowship Grant may seem small, but its prestige is not to be underestimated. I was able to hire a student assistant for several months, who could do some crucial fieldwork for me.
Martijn Smit is a researcher at Utrecht University on the geography and economics of remote working, regional development, labour markets, agglomeration, processes of innovation and innovation diffusion, peripheries, and EU regional policy. His MA was in cultural geography (Groningen) and his PhD in spatial economics (VU Amsterdam). He currently focuses on the impact working from home has on commuting, rural gentrification, and wellbeing. He teaches Foundations of Human Geography and Spatial Planning as well as a course Science and Society on philosophy of science.