Included in an edited collection focusing on social services of general interest in Europe, this chapter considers the concept of "social service" as it is understood in France, and addresses concerns relating to spatial equality to diagnose issues of accessibility to maternity wards across the Greater Region. The representations provided differ from Anglo-Saxon approaches to measuring the territorial impact of social services of general interest, by taking a predominantly social approach. As the focus of the study, the Greater Region exemplifies the heterogeneity of issues of accessibility seen across neighboring regions.
In this anthology, the authors examine how cross-border regions emerge and what characterizes them. The practices of institutional participants and border area residents in the fields of the labor market, economy, political cooperation, media, everyday life and culture will be analyzed and discussed.
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.).
At the heart of the Greater Region Saar-Lor-Lux, the development of a border-crossing labor force has been met with a diversification of its forms, including cross-border temporary labor. Temp-work agencies have begun to play an important role as intermediaries in these cross-border spaces, privileging the development of particular forms of employment and taking advantage of the different social and fiscal legislation characterizing different jurisdictions, all the while contributing to the recruitment of a cross-border labor-force.
