Grenzgänger und Räume der Grenze. Raumkonstruktionen in der Großregion SaarLorLux

Border dweller life plans and professional activities
Professional biographies, job search strategies, motivational structures as well as aspects pertaining to border dwellers’ quality of life and future projects were analysed. Traditional-continuous career paths were identified on the one hand, which are especially relevant to older border dwellers working in the industrial field, as well as more flexible-discontinuous professional biographies on the other hand, which tended to apply to younger border dwellers working in the services sector. Almost half of border dwellers found their current job through informal information channels; the cross-border mobility of workers is largely due to differences between regions in terms of income opportunities and job offers. The approach to aspects pertaining to quality of life is based on the benefits and drawbacks of “life as a border dweller”; the factors mentioned included the long journeys, the prospect of satisfactory retirement, the multicultural working environment and the opportunity to learn a foreign language. A rather positive financial situation, lack of time and stress induced by long journeys were also mentioned. “Life as a border dweller” was still, however, presented as a sustainable life and professional plan.

Experience of each other and professional socialisation
Regarding the analysis of interactions in the workplace, the plurality of colleagues (in terms of nationalities), the subjective constructions of differences and their management method were taken into account.     It was noted that companies employed three or four of the nationalities taken into account and that border dwellers essentially worked with resident colleagues or colleagues from the region of residence. Consequently, informal day-to-day moments in the workplace are mainly spent with people from the same country of residence, essentially because of the shared communication language and knowledge. Nonetheless, the plurality in terms of mentalities and languages in the workplace is perceived as interesting and enriching. Differences between colleagues of different nationalities were perceived with regard to vocational training, expertise or behaviour at work. Almost half of border dwellers mentioned problems between colleagues of different nationalities, stressing differences in languages and working methods as the reason.

Languages and communication in the day-to-day running of the company.
Given the linguistic situation in the Greater Region, a limited diversity of languages was observed in the cross-border labour market. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which is multilingual and favours cross-border worker mobility, is quite special as border dwellers can in large part express themselves in their mother tongue. However, languages are the main reason given to explain the problems between colleagues of different nationalities. In this context, different contact situations between languages were observed in the workplace, for example border dwellers communicating almost exclusively in a foreign language or in their mother tongue, or even largely dealing with situations in lingua franca. With regard to knowledge acquired in a foreign language, border dwellers leaving the Lorraine region to go to the Sarre region, as well as surveyed people working in Luxembourg and living in Rhineland-Palatinate, proved to be particularly skilful, in part thanks to the similarities between dialects. With regard to learning a foreign language, informal learning in the workplace is the dominant model. It was also observed that communication in a foreign language requires a greater concentration effort, and can even be tiresome, while contributing to making work more interesting. The perception of communication modes reflected on the one hand an indirect and implicit communication style, particularly attributed to French workers, and on the other hand a direct and explicit approach which was typical of German speakers.

Perceptions of border dwellers and equal treatment
Generally, a positive to mixed attitude is observed towards border dwellers in the Greater Region, although they are partly perceived as competitors in the labour market. This ambivalence of the defined border dweller status was therefore described as “a necessary nuisance”. Differences nevertheless exist between regions. An additional survey involving the resident Luxembourg population confirmed that border dwellers were perceived as competitors; however, this alleged competition for work was more related to the type of qualifications sought than to competition through exclusion. The latter form of competition is of secondary importance for Luxembourgians, who tend to wish for well-paid, safe jobs in the (semi) public sector, offering them “protection” against competition from foreign workers. Against this backdrop, the survey revealed a positive perception of border dwellers in Luxembourg, particularly socio-economic aspects, whereas negative or hostile opinions regarding border dwellers tended to have socio-cultural roots. Claims to unequal treatment within companies on a day-to-day basis were essentially based on comparisons with the way resident workers were treated, whereas cases of unequal treatment between different groups of border dwellers according to their nationality seemed less frequent.

Spatial identities and stereotypes
It was initially observed that border dwellers had a strong sense of belonging to their “residence territory”, on a local, regional and national level; on a wider scale, i.e. from the perspective of a world or European citizen, differences emerged between border dwellers who settled down in the analysed residence regions and those who had “always lived there". Newcomers felt more European or cosmopolitan, whereas those who had lived in a given place for a long time tended to identify to sub-European levels of belonging. Regions of the Greater Region and the working region were those with which there was the least identification. This is probably due to the political nature of the Greater Region, which makes it a vague, abstract entity for many border dwellers. With regard to the working region, border dwellers have largely observed space fragmentation practices, which are part of primary or secondary regionalisation processes. Furthermore, it appeared that border dwellers who had non work-related daily activities and social contacts in their working region tended to have a stronger sense of belonging to their working region and to the Greater Region than workers to whom these factors did not apply.

Social relations and communitisation practices
It initially appeared that the cross-border mobility of workers only slightly limited the social relations of border dwellers. On the contrary, they tend to make new friends in their working and residence regions through their border dweller activity, while keeping their friends in their residence region. In this respect, differences were observed between regions, which seem to indicate that the length of the journey to the workplace as well as the existence of a shared language or dialect play a role in the development or maintenance of social relations. The new friends made were essentially border dwellers from the same region of residence as the surveyed people, which is related to communitisation practices within and out of the company, such as between company departments or through shared accommodation, ride sharing or company transportation services. Furthermore, it seems that formal and informal forms of organisation favour communitisation and therefore the development of a collective identity among border dwellers. In this respect, formal organisation structures within trade unions or based on mutual aid, as well as informal communitisation practices were studied as examples.