For the past five years, I’ve lived in a flat in a four-storey apartment building standing atop a hill in the pastel-hued district of Lapa, Lisbon. I work from my desk at home, with a view of palm fronds outside the window as I dial into Zooms with London advertising agencies, for which I’m paid in pounds into a UK bank account. Upstairs, one of my neighbours makes money from France, and downstairs another offers financial coaching to a range of international clients.
In the flat just across the hallway, three Scandinavian digital creatives work remotely for clients in their own home countries. All the school-age children attend international private schools. The building, clad in weathered Portuguese tiles, is owned by a single Portuguese family. The remote workers live among four siblings, aged 60-plus, who each live on one of the floors. The building tells a typical story of the demographic of the local area: Portuguese who have benefited from inherited wealth and foreigners earning foreign incomes.
