This training was set up in response to the complex issues that the Latin American population faced in this part of the world. The border region, which includes 6 Mexican states and 4 American states, has specific characteristics in terms of demography and migratory dynamics. This vast territory studied has become a complex ecological, geopolitical and economic unit whose development significantly impacts the United States, Mexico and part of Latin America.
Since 2007, the Trinational Agglomeration of Basel has allowed the coordination and implementation of concrete measures across the entire territory of the agglomeration. These measures meet the objective of articulating the preservation of landscapes,, the management of urban development and the implementation of public transport services within the territory of the agglomeration. The project is led by a trinational association Agglo Basel of which all the local authorities making up the agglomeration are members. The overall project is designed to ensure that investments in infrastructure are coordinated and balanced between the three national components of the agglomeration.
In France, cooperation projects initiated by local authorities are managed at a decentralised level and, more often than not, result from free initiatives. These cooperation projections grouped together under the general term of "external actions of local authorities" are supported by a ministerial delegation. This support is implemented by different bodies (the National Commission on Decentralised Cooperation (CNCD), the Directorate General for Local Authorities (DGCL), enabled by different funding sources accessible via calls for projects and encouraged by different networking mechanisms.
The Center for Inter American and Border Studies (CIBS) has established itself as a benchmark in the field of border studies by capitalising on the expertise on its own border territory. As well as often being high-profile, this territory presents some important challenges in terms of governance, demography and migration, as well as access to education and healthcare, employment and economic development. To meet these challenges the centre has developed an interdisciplinary approach specific to the territory studied, and a high level of expertise.
The University of San Diego's Trans-Border Institute (TBI) promotes lasting peace in Mexico and in the border region, through applied research, innovative educational practices and cross-border partnerships. For twenty years, the TBI has been a source of information on cross-border issues and the relations between Mexico and the United States. The TBI publishes data from surveys and reports on police reforms, arms trafficking and the application of the immigration laws.
The Centre for Border Region Studies in the University of Southern Denmark, in Sønderborg (founded in 2016, based on a research tradition dating back to 1976), links the Faculty of Human Sciences and the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences for interdisciplinary and comparative research work using qualitative methods. Specifically, the disciplines represented for research in the field of European cross-border regions are anthropology, geography, history and political sciences.
The research themes are structured using four fields as indicated by the Centre for Border Region Studies:
The role and developing functions of borders and cross-border regions
Current cross-border European regions: conflicts and cooperation
The role of (cross-border) regions and of the European Union
Located in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the interdisciplinary Centre for International Border Research deals with border reconfiguration and conflict transformation at various levels. The academic staff involved comes from anthropology, geography, political science and sociology. The network represents an opportunity for scholars worldwide to network and exchange research outputs on borders. It does so by a wide range of activities: organization/supporting seminars and conferences, running a visiting fellowship programme, publishing working papers, hosting a well-documented multi-media resource platform. The website provides free access to a large extent of the network. The website documents mainly activities that ran in the 2000s and early 2010s.
