In this article, we concentrate on the sensitivity of the labour market to financial crises in Luxembourg. Luxembourg is a global financial centre specialising in banking, investment funds and insurance. This specialisation partly conditions the labour market in Luxembourg. Specialisation in financial activities requires a highly qualified workforce. Luxembourg is a small country that suffers from labour shortages and needs migrant workers. Against this background, we will show that cross-border workers are at greater risk of losing their jobs than native workers.
Due to its attractiveness, since the end of the 20th century, Luxembourg has seen strong growth. This development has occurred more or less coherently at a functional level, but is very fragmented at the social level. In fact, many highly qualified workers now live in this cross-border metropolitan area. This article analyses this phenomenon based on spatial data with the aim of understanding how this young territory is structured according to the transport networks and the borders.
This article details a study conducted in an automotive company situated in close proximity to the French-German border in Moselle. The aim of the study was to uncover the role that borders play in the organisation and life of the company. The method adopted was intended to be multidisciplinary from the outset in view of the imbricated nature of the phenomena studied. The preliminary results focus on linguistic practices in the company and what they reveal about the company's relations with its local area and the effects of borders and the obstacles they create for the work and personal experiences of the employees.
The Center for Inter American and Border Studies (CIBS) has established itself as a benchmark in the field of border studies by capitalising on the expertise on its own border territory. As well as often being high-profile, this territory presents some important challenges in terms of governance, demography and migration, as well as access to education and healthcare, employment and economic development. To meet these challenges the centre has developed an interdisciplinary approach specific to the territory studied, and a high level of expertise.
A special feature of the greater region is in its shared labour market, which leads to strong cross-border mobility among employees. The goal of this study is characterising the information on the group of cross-border commuters. An econometrical model was chosen for this. This model shows that the cross-border commuters are, on average, younger than other employees. Gender and education also apparently plays a role. The model shows that cross-border commuters do not form any homogeneous group in terms of region of origin.
This article analyses the process of spatial integration in ten European cross-border metropolitan regions. To do so, the authors compare three indicators relating to flow of cross-border commuters, differentials in gross domestic product per capita and residents' citizenship. This article leads to a typology based on three models of cross-border integration being proposed: by specialization, by polarization and by osmosis.
In spite of their small sizes, Luxembourg and Switzerland have a high demand for workers. In particular, they offer employment opportunities to people crossing the border to work. The situation in the main employment sites (Luxembourg, Basel, Geneva) – but also Ticino – is the object of the subject leaflet that 19 authors submit contributions with comparing perspectives. Under consideration of central context features and methodological considerations, the geographers, economists, sociologists and politologists considered in particular the labour market, cross-border everyday life and social perception of cross-border commuters. The multidisciplinary approach was eventually condensed by the editors into shared challenges between Luxembourg and Switzerland.
Through the figures provided, this report underscores the changes in employment seen over the last two decades and how factors such as age, gender, education, type of work pattern and nationality have played a role. It examines the economic life of persons out of the labour force aged between 50 and 64, whilst analysing in detail the withdrawal from the labour force of the over-50s over the last ten years.
The environmental powers of the state authorities and the local authorities respectively are determined, in this article, on the basis of a choice of the main treaties and international declarations. These texts are the result of bilateral or multilateral negotiations and constitute a compromise between the different positions of the States, the only subjects in international law. In this respect, States are more or less inclined to allow the local level to participate in the implementation of the international environmental instruments that they sign. The term "local" can be used to refer to all the relevant territorial levels situated below State level.
As for the notion of "national/state authority", it can be used to refer to central government or decentralised bodies. Finally, the term "local authority", a generic term defined by its opposition to the authorities of the sovereign State, is inspired by the practice of the Council of Europe's European Outline Convention on Transfrontier Co-operation and refers at once to territorial authorities of the French type, regional entities with legislative powers, federated entities and "local authorities" of the type found in English-speaking countries. Of course we also find that the traditional position of international law has survived, that is to say that state authorities have a monopoly on implementing the treaty as they see fit.
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.
