Borderlands of Governance: Municipal Perspectives on Cooperation in the Saarland-Moselle Region (Räume – Grenzen – Hybriditäten)

By: Nora Crossey

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Synopsis: 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.