Governance – Power – Cooperation

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Lille, Strasbourg and Basel are powerful cities situated close to national borders.  Fuelled by economic, political and symbolic functions, their influence creates regions that are both metropolitan and cross-border. Thanks to interviews, cartographic work and textual analyses, this thesis looks at how cross-border metropolitan regions are constructed. This emerges as a process whereby the local actors have to mobilise together and with the European Union to negotiate with the States. This European scale recomposition generates areas subject to tensions where the cross-border conurbation is also part of other, larger regions.

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The symbolic role of national borders for cross-border regionalisation remains little-known. In order to broaden our understanding of the meaning-making capacity of borders, this paper looks at what happens when the border is apparently not the object of a symbolisation strategy. The case of Greater Geneva appears particularly informative as this cross-border cooperation seeks to develop an integrated urban agglomeration marked by the ‘erasure’ of the Franco-Swiss border. Rather than an absence of symbolisation, the border is recoded as a ‘planned obsolescence’ through its ‘invisibilization’ in the Genevan borderscape. However, the dissonance between this recoding by cross-border cooperation elites and existing popular imaginations weakens the cooperation project. To the extent that borders are powerful symbols which are intended to stimulate emotions and empathy, the ability to mobilize their meaning-making capacity is at the heart of symbolisation politics, as much for the proponents of open borders and cross-border cooperation as for the reactionary forces that emphasize national interests and ontological insecurity.

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In view of the multiple possible interpretations emerging in the public debate, the eminently cross-cutting but also sensitive nature of the topic covered, the publication endeavours first of all to explain the reasons why it would be a good idea to adopt a co-development policy. It attempts to define the objectives it should seek to achieve, the actors that might be involved as well as the possible content through a number of concrete proposals for implementation.

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In essence, the report concludes there are two different ways: the first is to give Limburg (or Dutch border provinces in general) a specific role in the application of existing multi- or bilateral instruments at the Benelux or EU level. This could include a vital role related to the EU instrument under debate (cross-border mechanism).

The second option would be the establishment of a specific national legal instrument that would provide the Province of Limburg (or all border provinces) with innovative tools to adapt Dutch legislation in the context of border obstacles.

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The aim of this contribution was to analyse the effects of travel measures taken in light of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Free Movement, specifically concerning cross-border regions. The report provided an in-depth examination of the principle of proportionality as well as case studies on several cross-border regions were conducted.  Due to the specificalities of border regions and the great importance and habit of cross-border mobility within daily life, it was found that discoordination of national COVID-19 measures and (disproportionate) travel restrictions particularly impacted border regions.

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This article proposes a systematic analysis of the Interreg IV A projects related to cross-border territorial development which were conducted along Europe's internal borders between 2007 and 2013. It reveals the diversity of the initiatives and shows that they can be separated into different categories according to whether they aim to (1) create or improve networks between actors, (2) produce territorial observations, (3) develop strategies or, finally, (4) produce tangible for the public at cross-border level.

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This Critical Dictionary on Borders, Cross-Border Cooperation and European Integration takes up the challenge to answer these questions. It is the first encyclopedia, which combines two so far not well-interconnected interdisciplinary research fields, i.e. Border Studies and European Studies. Organized in an alphabetical order, it contains 209 articles written by 124 authors from different countries and scientific disciplines, which are accompanied by 66 maps. The articles deal with theory, terminology, concepts, actors, themes and spaces of cross-border cooperation at European borders and in borderlands of and around the European Union (EU).

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Cross-border working is a phenomenon that has concerned a growing number of people in Europe since the beginning of the 2000s. Lorraine, which constitutes a large labour pool and until the recent territorial reform was the only French region with borders with three countries, is concerned by large-scale flows into Luxembourg and to a lesser extent into Germany, and therefore represents a pertinent area to study to identify the geographical and economic dimensions of cross-border working. Cross-border working is analysed as a factor in regulating the job market through its heterogeneity, but also the legal standardisation of the status of the cross-border worker.

Working Paper Vol. 13

Visuel
WP 13
Abstract

Based on a sample of job advertisements published in the main Luxembourgish daily newspaper (Luxemburger Wort) covering the period 1984-2019, this study describes the development of language skills required on the Luxembourg job market. After a brief presentation of the linguistic situation and the labor market in Luxembourg, the statistical analysis of a sample of some 8,340 job advertisements constitutes the main part of this publication. A qualitative study of a smaller body of job vacancies sheds additional light and a detailed understanding of linguistic needs in a multilingual and international labor market. Both approaches come to the same conclusion. The labor shortage and particularly the lack of people fluent in the "three languages of the country" has led to a segmentation of the labor market.

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In the face of current environmental challenges, the article analyzes the interrelated processes of commoning and b/ordering in relation to transboundary environmental commons. The author suggests a multi-scalar approach to the governance of transboundary resources and points to power relations, distribution conflicts and questions of costs and benefits for different stakeholders at intersecting scales. She emphasizes that borders are not static (geo)political configurations but administrative categories that change in relation to commoning practices performed by transboundary communities of commoning.