Employment – Education – Economy

Miniature
Summary

At the heart of the Greater Region Saar-Lor-Lux, the development of a border-crossing labor force has been met with a diversification of its forms, including cross-border temporary labor. Temp-work agencies have begun to play an important role as intermediaries in these cross-border spaces, privileging the development of particular forms of employment and taking advantage of the different social and fiscal legislation characterizing different jurisdictions, all the while contributing to the recruitment of a cross-border labor-force.

Miniature
Summary

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.

Working Paper Vol. 5

Visuel
Working Paper Vol. 5
Abstract

This paper analyses everyday practices carried out by the residents of the Saarland, Lorraine, Luxembourg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Wallonia in the neighbouring regions abroad. The key assumption is the consideration that the inhabitants of the Greater Region SaarLorLux define the transborder reality of life of this region through their cross-border performance of everyday practices. Such a socio-constructivist perspective is not interested in what the Greater Region SaarLorLux actually is, but in what ways it is constituted or how it manifests itself in the daily lives of its inhabitants. Therefor the most common cross-border everyday practices, such as shopping for everyday needs, leisure-time shopping, outdoor recreation/tourism, cultural events, as well as visiting friends and family are looked at in greater detail. These observations are based on selected findings from three recent empirical studies of the study region, which have been linked to each other as well as socio-culturally and socioeconomically mapped in order to carve out the spatial organization, the motives and other contextual factors of cross-border everyday practices in the Greater Region SaarLorLux. This approach allows reconstructing mobility flows and spatial emphases in the context of everyday practices and gives insights into the nature of cross-border living realities in the Greater Region SaarLorLux.

Working Paper Vol. 3

Visuel
Working Paper Vol. 3
Abstract

The working paper examines the themes of employment and economic development and addresses the challenges of spatial development in the Greater Region. It focuses in particular on industrial history, employment and cross-border work in the Greater Region.

Working Paper Vol. 2

Visuel
Working Paper Vol. 2
Abstract

The working paper examines the theme of mobility and transport and addresses the challenges of spatial development in the Greater Region. It focuses in particular on the territorial distribution of cross-border worker flows and their dependence on the car within the Greater Region, as well as on the influence of European policy on the challenges of cross-border transport.

Borders in Perspective Vol. 2

Visuel
Borders in Perspective Vol. 2
Abstract

Small countries with significant labor needs, Luxembourg and Switzerland both attract a large number of cross-border workers. To compare the two, the 19 authors contributing to this thematic issue analyzed the situation of border workers in the main cross-border employment areas (Luxembourg, Basel, Geneva), and also in Ticino. In considering the contextual and methodological elements the geographers, economists, sociologists and political scientists focus on employment issues, the cross-border everyday life and society’s perception of cross-border workers. This collective, mulitdisplinary approach is summarized by the editors who went on to identify the challenges shared equally by Luxembourg and Switzerland.