The author, drawing on the theoretical conceptual developments and changes in the field of border area research during the last decades, identifies and describes three analytical trends ("shifts"): the processual shift, the multiplicity shift and the complexity shift. These are not separate from each other, but refer to specific orientations in border research. Starting from the observation that in the wake of the so-called border turn there was an increase in awareness of borders, and against the background of the practice turn, which no longer sees culture as being characterised by representations, but by practices, through the three shifts new possibilities arise for examining borders, which focus more sharply on the processual and performative elements of the border.
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.
Border work has an indisputable influence on the development of areas on both sides of the border. This article summarizes the impact and policy responses to the steady increase in the number of cross-border workers, with an emphasis on the Lorraine villages and cities where most of the cross-border commuters to Luxembourg live. After a presentation of the evolution of the number of cross-border workers in Lorraine, the perception of the impact of this trend on territorial development on local, inter-municipal, regional, national, and European policies is summarized. Under the title “local dynamics,” the improvement of the accessibility of the territories, the increase in housing construction, the development of services and facilities, as well as financial and tax support are discussed. It is noted that the impact varies by area and creates strong disparities. Reflections on development prospects are presented.
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.
