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Thematic issue Borders in Perspective Vol. 7

Visuel
Thematic issue Vol. 7
Abstract

In border areas, there is a special need for cross-border coordination between the stakeholders of spatial development and spatial planning with regard to spatially relevant challenges and future oriented development processes. The process of creating and implementing cross-border spatial development concepts requires intensive communication and cooperation across borders. However, these can make an important contribution to a coordinated cross-border spatial development and thus bundle resources as well as efficiently direct them to coordinated measures and projects. In addition to this added value of cross-border cooperation, however, there are also numerous points of friction and obstacles, which are caused, among other things, by different planning traditions and cultures, administrative systems and responsibilities, or also concern a lack of knowledge about planning instruments in the cross-border context. In cross-border spatial planning and development practice, these obstacles and the existing spatial challenges can also be countered by sub-spatial or subject-specific cooperation institutionalized and organized at different spatial levels. In this thematic issue, strategies and concepts from cross-border spatial development are presented and highlighted, which deal with different topics of spatial development, reflect a spectrum of cross-border forms of cooperation and organization and discuss the added value.

Miniature
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.

Miniature
Summary

These themed dossier looks at the question of local and regional labour markets, whether cross-border or not, through some multidisciplinary quantitative examples concerning the determinants, stakes and impacts of these particular forms of mobility, according to the different units of analysis and/or time periods.

In this way, different comparisons are made on different markets in order to understand how cross-border workers are different to non-cross-border workers (and even migrants) within the different geographical areas of the local and regional labour markets. With the aim of answering these different questions, four articles are selected to try and provide some answers.

Miniature
Summary

This chapter questions the marginality of border areas. The marginal nature of border areas is often highlighted in public politics, but rarely directly presented in all its ambiguity. Although these spaces may contain places of marginalization (prostitution, concentration of various types traffic, accumulation of refugees confined to the border), these situations are far from a generalization. Thus, it isn't enough to define them this way. The ambiguous relationship between borders and margins is addressed symbolically by the various cases (in France and in Europe). To test the character of the margin phenomena, a multi-level approach is proposed.