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.
