Jean-Luc Deshayes
Fonction
Chercheur
Organisation
Laboratoire Lorrain de Sciences Sociales, Université de Lorraine, France
Représentations du transfrontalier et question sociale : 30 ans de reconversion à Longwy
Représentations du transfrontalier et question sociale : 30 ans de reconversion à Longwy
Border Region
Cross-border area around Longwy progressively extended to the Greater Region
Language(s)
Français
Main Category
Introduction
In academic literature and on the public policy agenda, the territorial issue occupies a more and more independent place. The territory is imposing itself as a relevant category for analysis and as a legitimate medium for spatial answers to spatial questions.
Summary
The Longwy cross-border area provides a fertile ground for discussing theories on the transformation of social issues into spatial issues, from the past domination of the steel industry and the brutality of the changes that have occurred over a thirty-year period to the sharp increase in cross-border working. Various representations of the notion of the cross-border rub shoulders here. The discourses of the institutions propose readings that are more and more focused on going beyond borders and moving further and further away from contradictory social relations. Yet researchers are reasserting the fact that it is social relations that define a territory, which, in return, inscribes them in its territory. But they do not agree on whether or not the class struggle has disappeared.
Content
The research for which this article is the output was initiated by MSH Lorraine human sciences centre. It is part of a series of long-term studies which have accompanied the thirty-year redevelopment of the Longwy steel region based on a situated anthropological approach: concern to use history to understand the present, extended field work involving multiple forms of investigation, unity of the social sciences, biographical familiarity of the researcher with the population studied.
Conclusions
The border and the cross-border worker at the centre of the conflicting discourses attempting to tell the community what it is, where it has come from and where it should go. They are therefore contributing to an increase in territorial references that are further and further away from the conflictual social relations that public policies seize upon to propose spatial answers to social questions.
Lead
Jean-Luc Deshayes, professeur de sociologie, université de Tours, laboratoire CITERES/COST, UMR 7324
Author of the entry
Jean-Luc
Deshayes
Contributions
Université de Nancy, laboratoire 2L2S.
Contact Person(s)
Date of creation
2020