Borderlands of Governance – Multilevel Cross-border Governance and Trajectories of Local Cross-border Ties in the Franco-German Moselle-Saarland Region

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent years, cross-border cooperation within the European Union – in particular between France and Germany – has experienced renewed “top-down” and “bottom-up” impulses towards a new multiscalarity. Focussing on the Moselle-Saarland region, we outline the relevance of local cross-border networks – conceptualized as “borderlands of governance” – for border-regional cooperation, which became particularly evident throughout the management of the Covid-19-pandemic. Making use of windows of opportunity offered by traditional “top-down” governance, borderlands of governance offer and perpetuate notions of alternative (cross-border) spatialities as relevant spaces of political action, both through practical spearheading of cross-border projects and through the representation of border interests within structures of multilevel governance.