Frontière | EPFL Graph Search

thumb|upright=1.2|Borne frontière à Passo San Giacomo entre Val Formazza en Italie et Val Bedretto en Suisse. thumb|upright=1.2|right|Panneau trilingue (finnois, suédois et same) marquant une frontière Schengen intérieure près de Kilpisjärvi (Finlande). thumb|upright=1.2|Frontière entre la RFA et la RDA en 1982. Une frontière est un espace d'épaisseur variable, de la ligne imaginaire à un espace particulier, séparant ou joignant deux territoires, en particulier deux États souverains. Les fonctions d'une frontière peuvent fortement varier suivant les régions et les périodes. Entre les pays de l'espace Schengen, elle n'est qu'une limite politique et juridique ne faisant pas obstacle à la circulation des personnes et des biens, alors qu'entre les deux Corées, elle est matérialisée par une large bande surveillée militairement et son franchissement est très restreint. De l'époque néolithique, il reste un alignement mégalithique, l'Alignement du Pilier, situé en forêt du Gâvre, qui corres

Cross-Border Life in Europe: Daily Mobility in the Trinational Metropolis of Basel

Yann Francis Eric Dubois

In Europe about 2 million people work and live in two different countries. While at the European scale cross-border workers only account for a limited portion of the working-age population, in some regions cross-border work takes a huge importance. In these regions, cross-border work generates many impacts on local territories and on their inhabitants in terms of housing, mobility or purchasing power, especially because of the wide salary differentials between some borders regions, like between Switzerland and its neighbouring countries. Indeed, Switzerland is the country in Europe which hosts the largest amount of cross-border workers. Research on border regions focus mainly on the macroscopic aspects of cross-border relationships, such as economic integration or cross-border cooperation, leaving partly aside the effects that cross-border work has on territories or their inhabitants. Thus, this article looks at the link between cross-border work and the other aspects of daily life such as consumption or leisure and more generally living conditions in the trinational metropolis of Basel. For this purpose, we conducted a study with inhabitants of the metropolitan area of Basel, in which cross-border work is largely practised - using a mixed methods design; fifteen interviews were conducted, followed by a quantitative survey (1,615 individuals). Results show that working or not across the border, in Switzerland, has a large impact on living conditions and influences the intensity and/or the destination of cross-border practices (leisure and consumption). Whereas cross-border workers tend to favour Switzerland, this country is less financially accessible to the rest of the population. The analysis of the inhabitants’ lifestyles also highlights two issues linked to cross-border work that the trinational metropolis of Basel faces and that may cause tension in the local population, i.e. 1) the highly differentiated living conditions between cross-border workers and the rest of the population 2) the large car use of cross-border workers.

2017

Les frontières au quotidien? Modes de vie dans l'agglomération trinationale de Bâle

Yann Francis Eric Dubois

The gradual opening of borders, which occurred over the past few decades have dramatically altered their role and function. Although these evolutions were not uniform, they have enabled the development of cross-border regions, which are characterized by a high diversity of opportunities for both sides of the border. These include but are not limited to employment and income, increased access to goods and services, and so on. But not everyone is able to or interested in crossing the border. They may be unaware of cross-border opportunities, lack the linguistic skills or the motivation. As such, the relation to the border and to the territories located beyond it is highly individual. With a specific focus on the trinational city of Basel, this study uses the concepts of motility and lifestyle to examine how a border influences the daily lives of people who live in a cross-border region. This study uses a mixed method design, combining contextual, qualitative (15 interviews) and quantitative data (1615 individuals). The findings indicate that, even as the border continues to play an important role in the daily lives of inhabitants, cross-border mobility is a significant feature defining their lifestyles. More than a third of the local population cross the borders for leisure or consumption activities and tens of thousands are cross-border workers. In terms of social networks, however, the study finds that the border tends to act more as a barrier. Finally, the cross-borderness of the city of Basel is deeply embedded in the city's identity to which a majority of the region inhabitants feel attached (about 75%). Even the individuals who never cross the border consider the cross-border situation of Basel an advantage. Inhabitants on the French side of the city are most active in "cross-border" activities, while the Swiss lifestyles are the least. Whereas Switzerland, as employment and metropolitan centre, and Germany, as an inexpensive destination, attract people from beyond their national borders for leisure or consumption activities, the French part seems to play a secondary role in this urban area. Even as individual characteristics, such as income or cross-border worker status, clearly have a large effect on lifestyle spatiality in cross-border regions, applying the concept of motility (Kaufmann, Bergman, & Joye 2004), provides important new and complementary findings. This concept makes it possible to address several questions linked to mobility practices in these regions, such as accessibility, the lack of motivation and interest for cross-border opportunities, the lack of skills (linguistic or social) and local knowledge, and so on. More generally, the work carried out underlines the need to better integrate social skills and spatial curiosity, into the understanding of mobility. Finally, the opening of borders may also have negative impacts on the inhabitants of these regions. Even if the overall cohesion of Basel is relatively good, there exists three structural weaknesses identified in other contexts. These include 1) the large differences in the living conditions between cross-border and non-cross-border workers, 2) the large motorized flows, 3) the functional and social specialization of the territories of the city. These weaknesses underline the need for stronger governance to regulate flows across borders carefully in order to mitigate the negative impacts of and utilize the opportunities associated with the opening of borders

EPFL2017

Les frontières au quotidien? Modes de vie dans l'agglomération trinationale de Bâle

Yann Francis Eric Dubois

EPFL2017

Cross-Border Life in Europe: Daily Mobility in the Trinational Metropolis of Basel

Yann Francis Eric Dubois

2017