La figure de l’étranger dans les mondes syndicaux. Quelques réflexions à partir des espaces frontaliers

Abstract

The foreigner in the world of trade unions. Some thoughts based on border areas The way in which trade unions integrate foreign workers has not been studied in depth and often represents a blind spot in terms of the focus of social movements on the one hand, and approaches to migration and how they are handled by public action on the other hand. This text ponders the issue taking into account the border areas in Europe based on north-east France. These unique economic areas carry an identity and political dimension which are currently becoming denser, based on cross-border migrations for work purposes and the transnational social relations that are formed on both sides of the border. In these semi-institutionalised areas, we look in particular at the itineraries of trade union workers in charge of crossborder issues, who appear as stakeholder intermediaries with mixed characteristics. The issue of language fluency and intercultural practice is particularly pertinent when encountering the other in terms of the dialectics of near and far as introduced by Georg Simmel around the figure of the foreigner, incarnated by this pendulum migrant, the crossborder worker, between foreignness and strangeness.