This edition analyses the transformations in the cross-border labour market. It draws on a number of different studies on:
the most sought-after skills (Pauline Bourgeon, Laetitia Hauret, David Marguerit, Ludivine Martin - LISER, Luxembourg).
the mismatch between labour supply and demand (Pierre Gramme - ADEM, Luxembourg).
remote working practices (Laetitia Hauret - LISER, Luxembourg) with a particular focus on the residents of Luxembourg (Hans Neumayr – STATEC, Luxembourg).
and the limits of growth in Luxembourg (Tom Haas – STATEC, Luxembourg).
This work insist on the development of jobs where demand is outstripping supply and the growth of remote working as an emerging method of working.
In spite of their small sizes, Luxembourg and Switzerland have a high demand for workers. In particular, they offer employment opportunities to people crossing the border to work. The situation in the main employment sites (Luxembourg, Basel, Geneva) – but also Ticino – is the object of the subject leaflet that 19 authors submit contributions with comparing perspectives. Under consideration of central context features and methodological considerations, the geographers, economists, sociologists and politologists considered in particular the labour market, cross-border everyday life and social perception of cross-border commuters. The multidisciplinary approach was eventually condensed by the editors into shared challenges between Luxembourg and Switzerland.
This article analyses cross-border employment and secondment of employees within the greater region, SaarLorLux. It questions the practices that have developed from these forms of mobility within this cross-border space at the contact point of 4 European countries (France, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium). It shows that these two forms of employment mobility demonstrate the right to mobility within Europe, which is one of the most important results of European integration. In order to support this, the author has performed various activities on site, e.g. in the scope of interviews with economic and social actors in the greater region.
In the greater region SaarLorLux, the development of atypical forms of secondment of workers between Luxembourg and Lorraine was followed. This article focuses on the cross-border secondment of temporary workers from Luxembourg to Lorraine. It turns out that French nationals are often seconded to Lorraine as temporary workers by Luxembourgian agencies. Sometimes they will work close to home. This document is structured into three parts. First, it presents the most important socio-economical dimensions of these secondment practices. Then it shows how the different economic dynamics and social legislation between countries contributed to the development of cross-border mobility (which includes the secondment of workers). Finally, it presents the current elements of the debate about secondment from the point of view of the local representatives of Luxembourg's temping agencies, representatives of the labour union and those responsible at the French labour inspection. The temping agencies in Luxembourg therefore play a determining role for Luxembourg and Lorraine. They use the different tax and social legislations on the order of the companies in Lorraine. For them, temporary workers of Luxembourgian agencies are less expensive than temporary workers from Lorraine. These are qualified workers for industry and construction. They are seconded for relatively long periods and for permanent tasks. These are also workers who have worked for Luxembourgian agencies for a long time. The different levels, employer costs, social security benefits and wages form the basis for the development of such practices. According to those responsible in the temping agencies, such practices are legal, even though they are viewed very critically by labour unions and employees in Lorraine. The labour inspectors also consider them insufficiently controlled due to lack of funds.
In recent years, border work has become a major social, economic and human phenomenon in many countries. The authors of this chapter analyze the situation of border workers in Lorraine – a region which has seen a great increase in the number of border workers in the past – to ask, "how does the border impact on the different structural components of attitudes to employment and to border work (salary, social protection, mobility, qualifications etc.)?" (p. 125). After introducing the issue in question along with any methodological aspects implicated in conducting such an analysis, the authors describe how the flow of border workers has developed in the Greater Region. The main body of the chapter consists in analysis of the spatial, institutional, and socioeconomic dimensions of the employment relationship and border work.
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.).
Throughout the Greater Saar-Lor-Lux Region, the development of border work has been accompanied by a diversification of its forms such as temporary cross-border labor. Temporary-work agencies have imposed themselves as new intermediaries of employment in these cross-border spaces, privileging the development of particular forms of employment and taking advantage of the different social and fiscal legislations operating in different jurisdictions, as they contribute to the recruitment of the cross-border labor-force. These detached temporary workers are relatively well-trained and well-qualified, and most of all they are tied to the temporary employment agencies. While such detachment of temporary workers remains the classical form of a flexible labor-force allowing for access to human resources not available in a given jurisdiction, it also represents a tool for the management of cross-border labor-cost differentials. On a larger scale, such practices of cross-border detachment threaten to speed up the process of deterritorializing systems of national law, and compel within the GR increased competition between national regulatory systems that have, notably, to do with finance and social protection.
