The border in common: The Janus-faced place attachment of cross-border regions

For several decades, cross-border areas have been the setting for the successive deployment of various cross-border cooperation and integration mechanisms. These mechanisms aim primarily to facilitate mobility and interaction between actors through cross-border cooperation projects designed to create institutional cross-border areas. The current article takes an approach centred on attachment to places with the aim of determining whether cross-border areas make sense for their inhabitants. The analyses are based on a cross-sectional survey of 3,200 inhabitants of three institutional cross-border areas: Greater Geneva, the Basque Eurocity and the Eurometropolis of Lille Kortrijk Tournai. The methodology introduces into the field of border studies the technique of structural equation models for the measurement of place attachment using different explanatory variables. Several original results are found. First, place attachment is composed of both the sense of belonging to a country and the residential location of the members ego’s (the respondent) personal network. Second, two notable forms of attachment have an ambivalent relationship within the institutional cross-border areas: attachment to the border region of residence and attachment to the neighbouring border region. Specifically, the estimated attachment to the neighbouring border region favours the declared attachment to the institutional cross-border area. Subsequently, the estimated attachment to either border region also helps explain the choice of location for regular activities. Finally, the reported attachment to the institutional cross-border area is dependent on the individual’s social position. These results open up new perspectives on European integration policies that could rely more strongly on attachment to strengthen social cohesion in institutional cross-border areas.