Recognizing European cross-border cooperation as a complex multilevel governance shaped by both bottom-up and top-down processes, and viewing recent border-regional strategies as a catalyst for decentralizing cross-border relations in French-German border regions, this book examines municipal actors' perspectives in the Greater Region, specifically the département Moselle and the German Saarland. Bridging governance and border studies by adopting a lens of borderlands of governance, it studies the contributions of intermunicipal cross-border governance to processes of bordering and place-making and to systems of multilevel cross-border governance. (In)formal intermunicipal cross-border networks whose relevance and ingenuity became particularly evident during the Covid-19 pandemic play a crucial role for the functioning of the borderspaces, in some instances evolving into quasi-territorial governance reflecting communities beyond national borders yet remaining bound to logics of territoriality and sovereignty. Here, the conceptualisation of borderlands of governance offers a framework for understanding them as contingent elements of multilevel cross-border governance.

Autorentext

Nora Crossey studied Liberal Arts & Sciences at University College Freiburg and Human Geography at the University of Tübingen. She completed her dissertation on cross-border cooperation at Saarland University. Her research interests include European governance and border studies

Inhalt

Introduction: Cross-Border Cooperation, Regional Strategies, and Borderlands.- Cross-Border Cooperation as a Multilevel Endeavour.- Theoretical and Conceptual Approaches towards Cross-Border (and) Multilevel Governance in European Border Regions.- Methodological Approach.- Borderlands of Governance in the Saarland-Moselle Region: Empirical Insights into the Interplay between Cross-Border Spatialities and Multilevel Governance.- Borderlands of Governance in the Saarland-Moselle Region and Beyond: Summary and Outlook.- Bibliography.