Le travail frontalier au sein de la Grande Région Saar-Lor-Lux. Pratiques, enjeux et perspectives

Border Region

Greater Region, SaarLorLux, Upper Rhine, Canton of Geneva

Language(s)

Français

Type

Note on a scientific book publication

Main Category

Employment – Education – Economy

Introduction

This joint interdisciplinary collection gathers twenty-four contributions from geographers, economists, historians, and sociologists presented at six cross-border colloquia about the forms, practices, stakes and perspectives of cross-border work.

Summary

The collection approaches the question of cross-border work from different methodological and disciplinary angles, in order to provide an overview of the research on the subject and to analyze the stakes involved in and ways of seeing this activity. The first section describes the configurations, evolution, and scope of cross-border work. The linguistic practices, displacements, and profiles of cross-border workers are elicited in order that these workers may, in the second section of the collection, be compared to others in such regions as the Upper Rhineland and the Canton of Geneva. Rather more analytical, the third section then deals with the dynamic effects of cross-border work on the development of economies, urbanization, physical spaces, and governance. Finally, the fourth and final section raises the question of the social construction of the status of cross-border workers, by way of regulations, conventions, and socio-political representations, etc.).

Content

The collection is edited by Rachid Belkacem (University of Lorraine) and Isabelle Pigeron-Piroth (University of Luxembourg), two socio-economists who have put cross-border work at the center of their research for years. The book combines the results of work presented at six cross-border seminars held in 2010 and 2011 in a number of different universities. The seminars served as a pilot of the project University of the Greater Region, whose goal it is to create a network of the universities in the Greater Region. The project was made possible thanks to a grant from INTERREG.

Geographers, economists, sociologists and historians have brought their work together in order to produce an overview of the state of our understanding of the topic in the Greater Region, where more than 200,000 people live and work in two different countries. In Luxembourg, cross-border work amounts to 44% of the salaried work-force, while 10% of the workers in Lorraine cross the border. This kind of activity has numerous impacts and challenges. Although the questions addressed, methodologies used and disciplines involved are multiple and varied from one chapter to the next, all of the work shares the same objectives, namely, to advance our understanding of the question of cross-border work and of its varied lesser-known forms.

Contents

1. Cross-Border Work at the Heart of the Greater Region Saar-Lor-Lux

Rachid Belkacem (University of Lorraine) and Isabelle Pigeron-Piroth (University of Luxembourg), Socio-Economists, Cross-Border Work at the Heart of the Greater Region Saar-Lor-Lux
Mireille Zanardelli, Anne-Sophie Genevois and Guy Schuller, Economists (CEPS/INSTEAD STATEC, Luxembourg), The Spending Habits in Luxembourg of Salaried Cross-Border Workers.
Laetitia Hauret and Mireille Zanardelli, Economists (CEPS/INSTEAD, Luxembourg), The Determinants of Multiple Cross-Border Employment in Luxembourg.
Jean-Marc Lambotte, Geographer (University of Liège, Belgium), Depending on the Car for Home-Office Cross-Border Commutes from and into Wallonia.
Fernand Fehlen, Sociologist (University of Luxembourg), Languages on the Job-Market in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
Anne Franziskus and Julia de Bres, Socio-Linguists (University of Luxembourg), The place of the Luxembourgish Language among the Linguistic
Practices of Cross-Border Workers in Luxembourg.
Christian Wille, Social-Scientist (Saarland University /University of Luxembourg), Us and Them: The Perception of Cross-Border Workers in Luxembourg.

2. Further Experiences of Cross-Border Work

Olivier Denert, (Mission Opérationnelle Transfrontalière, Paris, France), The flux of Cross-Border Workers in France and Europe.
Pierre Tilly, Historian (University of Louvain, Belgium), The Cross-Border Workers in the French Department of Nord, around the Metropolis of Lille: a Common History.
Philippe Hamman, Sociologist (University of Strasbourg), Alsatian Cross-Border Workers in Germany and Switzerland: Statistical Profiles and Sociological Perspectives.
Jean-Baptiste Delaugerre, Geographer (Universities of Lyon and Geneva), Cros-Border Workers in Switzerland: the Case of the Canton of Geneva.
Claudio Bolzman, Sociologist (Haute École de Travail Social, Geneva), Cross-Border Workers in Switzerland: Socio-cultural Practices and Social Representations of the Region of French-Geneva.

3. Cross-Border Spaces and Work in the Greater Region Saar-Lor-Lux

Rachid Belkacem (University of Lorraine) and Isabelle Pigeron-Piroth (University of Luxembourg), Socio-Economists, the Effect of the Border and Cross-Border Development
Marie-France Gaunard-Anderson, Geographer (University of Lorraine), The Impacts of Cross-Border Work on the Development of Border Cities and Towns in Lorraine.
Samuel Carpentier and Philippe Gerber, Geographers (CEPS/INSTEAD, Luxembourg), The Structure of Local Mobilities and the Reconfiguration of Cross-Border Living Spaces in Luxembourg.
Christian Lamour, Geographer (CEPS-INSTEAD, Luxembourg), The Cross-Border Projection of the Communes and the Inter-Communalities in the Greater Region: Towards a Metropolitan Double Territoriality
Tobias Chilla, Estelle Evrard, Christian Schulz, Geographers (University of Luxembourg), Cross-Border Governance – Territory/-ies and Territoriality/-ies
Eric Auburtin, Geographer (Institut Français de Géopolitique (IFG), Paris 8), The Greater Region, an Inter-regional and Polycentric Space, Staged and Questioned by the Map.

4. Regulation and Normalizing of Cross-Border Work

Monique Borsenberger, Sociologist (CEPS/INSTEAD, Luxembourg), The Legal and Conventional Status of Cross-Border Work.
Franz Clément, Political Scientist (CEPS/INSTEAD, Luxembourg), Socio-Political Integration and Representation of Cross-Border Workers in Luxembourg.
Rachid Belkacem, Economist (University of Lorraine) and René Kratz (OREFQ, Nancy), The Role of Employment Intermediaries in the Adjustment Process between the Work-Force Supply and Demand in a Cross-Border Context.
Antoine Schneider, former director of the Collège Européen de Technologie (France), The Experience of Human Resource Management in a Cross-Broder Context : the Case of the Collège Européen de Technologie.
Philippe Hamman, Sociologist (University of Strasbourg), Cross-Border Work Relations and Territorial Development: Elements of a Sociology of Spaces and Borders.
Jean-Luc Deshayes, Sociologist (GREE-2L2S-CEREQ, MSH Lorraine, University of Lorraine), Effects of theBorder and the Transformation of Employment: a Theoretical Debate with the Literature on Cross-Border Work.

Conclusions

Among the most important results of this study is the delicate questioning of the measurement of cross-border work. This measurement depends, at once, on the data made available to researchers (however often incomplete and incompatible), and on the definitions, which vary according to the different social and fiscal security perspectives taken.

Cross-border work is a structural phenomenon anchored in local economies. Its dimension and its substantial increase make of the Greater Region a particular fruitful area of study, rich with numerous impacts to be traced. Economically speaking, cross-border workers, who are estimated to have spent approximately nine thousand euros individually per year and per person in 2007, represent a rich source of economic activity that has only recently begun to be accounted for.

The perspective provided by other regions similarly impacted by cross-border work (Upper Rhine, Canton of Geneva) reveals the importance of contextual elements, and raises such interesting aspects of the question as the sociocultural practices and social representation of cross-border workers that differ dramatically from that of the rest of the local work-force.

Increasingly numerous and increasingly long-distance, such forms of work-home mobility structure even the physical spaces encountered. Modes of transportation and territorial development, as well as population centers proper, are impacted by cross-border work. Questions about scales and governance are therefore central: What vision of territoriality should be adopted? Cross-border cooperation implies a re-territorialization, which is to say that the role of the territory remains fundamental to and integrated into a multi-scaled and multi-tiered structure.

Cross-border work is socially constructed around such rules, norms and conventions that give it structure and shape, allowing it to function as a quantitative and qualitative regulator of the needs and availabilities of the work-force on either side of a border. Adjustments can then be made by public investment systems according to the changing cross-border character of the labor market. Temporary work agencies also play a role in the alignment of the supply and demand of labor by being strategically situated (near the borders) and developing the territorial management of the work-force through the removal, selection, and provision of workers.

Key Messages

By a multiplicity of methods, disciplines, and topics covered, this collection offers an overview of the wide-ranging panorama of cross-border work. It provides for a better understanding of an activity that connects a worker’s countries of residence and of employment to one another. Beyond the mere description of the scope and the recent evolution of cross-border work, this research interrogates the impacts of cross-border work on physical spaces and juridical regulations, and engages with the question of the kinds of challenges that will require forms of necessary cooperation and governance

Lead

Université de Lorraine and Université du Luxembourg

Author of the entry

Isabelle

PIGERON-PIROTH

Contributions

Université du Luxembourg

Université de Lorraine

Université de Liège

Université de Lyon

Université de Genève

Haute Ecole de Travail Social Genève