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In recent years, various low-threshold and often creative methods and tools have been developed, considering the specific requirements of vulnerable persons to explore their identities, experiences, knowledge, opinions and needs. The idea of LEGO® Serious Play® is based on play pedagogy. Playing allows to distance oneself from everyday life by sliding into a world of imaginations, ideas and utopias while concurrently keeping the ties to reality (Heimlich, 2015). LEGO® Serious Play® uses metaphors to enable participants to express playfully their thoughts and ideas. As the building process with Lego bricks is physical and haptic, LEGO® Serious Play® is a low-threshold method to work with vulnerable groups (Cavaliero, 2017). The following article will concentrate on the use of LEGO® Serious Play® as creative exploration method and its possibilities and limitations when used to empower young migrants in vulnerable conditions in the Germany and Luxembourg in the H2020 research project MIMY.

Der Beitrag behandelt die Steuerung des Siedlungsflächenwachstums im Großherzogtum Luxemburg aus der Perspektive von Informalität. Luxemburg steht unter einem hohen demographischen und ökonomischen Wachstumsdruck in allen Landesteilen (Hauptstadt, altindustrialisierter Süden, ländlicher Norden), der das Planungssystem stark herausfordert. Zugleich gibt es keine formelle Regionalplanung, allenfalls Ansätze interkommunaler Kooperation, die überwiegend freiwilliger Natur sind. Anhand von empirischen Fallstudien in zwei wachstumsstarken Gemeinden (Junglinster, Schuttrange) skizziert der Beitrag Planungsentscheidungen im institutionellen Dreieck zwischen Kommune, Staat und privaten Trägern. Informalität dient hier nicht nur zur Kompensation fehlender planerischer Steuerung, sondern auch dem Umgang mit der komplexen Rechtsmaterie des Landes. Informell kommen auch die vitalen Interessen der Grundeigentümer ins Spiel: Da ein Teil derWohlfahrtseffekte des Landes über Grund und Boden realisiert wird, sind Spekulationsinteressen immanent, haben ein hohes Blockadepotenzial. In diesem Kontext formuliert der Beitrag erste Überlegungen für ein regionales Wachstumsmanagement, das die Lücke zwischen staatlicher Landesplanung und kommunalem Eigensinn schließen könnte. This paper deals with the management of settlement growth in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg from the perspective of informality. Luxembourg is subject to high demographic and economic growth pressures across all parts of the country (capital, old-industrialized South, rural North), which strongly challenges the current planning system. At the same time, there is no formal regional planning, apart from approaches of inter-municipal cooperation, which are mainly voluntary in nature. Drawing on empirical case studies in two high-growth municipalities (Junglinster, Schuttrange), the paper outlines planning decisions in the institutional triangle between municipality, state and private institutions. Informality serves here not only to compensate for a lack of planning control, but also to deal with the country's complex legal framework conditions. The vital interests of landowners come into play informally as well: since parts of the country's wealth emerge from the valorization of property, speculative interests are immanent, and thus block development processes. In this context, the paper addresses elements of a regional growth management that could close the gap that exists between state planning and municipal autonomy.

Despite research history spanning more than a century, settlement patterns still hold a promise to contribute to the theories of large-scale processes in human history. Mostly they have been presented as passive imprints of past human activities and spatial interactions they shape have not been studied as the driving force of historical processes. While archaeological knowledge has been used to construct geographical theories of evolution of settlement there still exist gaps in this knowledge. Currently no theoretical framework has been adopted to explore them as spatial systems emerging from micro-choices of small population units. The goal of this thesis is to propose a conceptual model of adaptive settlement systems based on complex adaptive systems framework. The model frames settlement system formation processes as an adaptive system containing spatial features, information flows, decision making population units (agents) and forming cross scale feedback loops between location choices of individuals and space modified by their aggregated choices. The goal of the model is to find new ways of interpretation of archaeological locational data as well as closer theoretical integration of micro-level choices and meso-level settlement structures. The thesis is divided into five chapters, the first chapter is dedicated to conceptualisation of the general model based on existing literature and shows that settlement systems are inherently complex adaptive systems and therefore require tools of complexity science for causal explanations. The following chapters explore both empirical and theoretical simulated settlement patterns based dedicated to studying selected information flows and feedbacks in the context of the whole system. Second and third chapters explore the case study of the Stone Age settlement in Estonia comparing residential location choice principles of different periods. In chapter 2 the relation between environmental conditions and residential choice is explored statistically. The results confirm that the relation is significant but varies between different archaeological phenomena. In the third chapter hunter-fisher-gatherer and early agrarian Corded Ware settlement systems were compared spatially using inductive models. The results indicated a large difference in their perception of landscape regarding suitability for habitation. It led to conclusions that early agrarian land use significantly extended land use potential and provided a competitive spatial benefit. In addition to spatial differences, model performance was compared and the difference was discussed in the context of proposed adaptive settlement system model. Last two chapters present theoretical agent-based simulation experiments intended to study effects discussed in relation to environmental model performance and environmental determinism in general. In the fourth chapter the central place foragingmodel was embedded in the proposed model and resource depletion, as an environmental modification mechanism, was explored. The study excluded the possibility that mobility itself would lead to modelling effects discussed in the previous chapter. The purpose of the last chapter is the disentanglement of the complex relations between social versus human-environment interactions. The study exposed non-linear spatial effects expected population density can have on the system and the general robustness of environmental inductive models in archaeology to randomness and social effect. The model indicates that social interactions between individuals lead to formation of a group agency which is determined by the environment even if individual cognitions consider the environment insignificant. It also indicates that spatial configuration of the environment has a certain influence towards population clustering therefore providing a potential pathway to population aggregation. Those empirical and theoretical results showed the new insights provided by the complex adaptive systems framework. Some of the results, including the explanation of empirical results, required the conceptual model to provide a framework of interpretation.

This study is the first to employ panel data to examine the time-varying effects of internal and international parental migration on the psychological well-being of children who stay behind in an African context. The analysis employs data collected in 2013, 2014 and 2015 from school going children aged 12-21 in two urban areas with high out-migration rates in Ghana - Kumasi and Sunyani. Using children's self-reports, an analysis was conducted separately for boys (N = 7 81) and girls (N = 7 05). Results indicate that girls and boys with the mother away internally or internationally are equally or more likely to have higher levels of psychological well-being when compared to boys and girls of non-migrant parents. A higher level of well-being is observed amongst girls when parents migrate and divorce. However, parental migration and divorce are more likely to increase the psychological vulnerability of boys. In Ghana, the psychological well-being of children is nuanced by which parent has migrated, marital status of migrant parent and the gender of the child.

This special issue of Comparative Migration Studies on the occasion of the IMISCOE 2021 Conference with the theme “Crossing borders, connecting cultures” features five invited contributions by several conference speakers as well as an article by the host university.

Cultural Border Studies focus on the social and symbolic dimensions of borders. They emerged from the intersection of the cultural turn in Border Studies with the border turn in Cultural Studies and address everyday cultural and artistic-aesthetic issues. During the resurgence of borders, Cultural Border Studies have gained further importance, which is reflected in their progressive institutionalization. Les Cultural Border Studies s'intéressent aux dimensions sociales et symboliques des frontières. Elles sont nées de l'intersection du Cultural Turn des Border Studies et du Border Turn des Cultural Studies et abordent des questions au niveau de la culture quotidienne et de l'esthétique. Dans le contexte de la réémergence des frontières, les Cultural Border Studies ont encore gagné en importance, ce qui se reflète dans leur institutionnalisation progressive. Die Cultural Border Studies befassen sich mit sozialen und symbolischen Dimensionen von Grenzen. Sie sind aus der Verschneidung des cultural turn in den Border Studies mit dem border turn in den Cultural Studies hervorgegangen und adressieren Fragen auf alltagskultureller und künstlerisch-ästhetischer Ebene. Im Zuge des Wiedererstarken von Grenzen haben die Cultural Border Studies weiter an Bedeutung gewonnen, was sich in einer fortschreitenden Institutionalisierung widerspiegelt.

Borders are increasingly at the center of social debate. The resurgence of borders manifests itself in a paradoxical way: For while border walls are once again being built and border facilities are being expanded, regulatory and control practices are increasingly fragmented and invisible in transterritorial terms. These developments point to the need to rethink the concept of borders, which is still unquestioned in many places. For this purpose, selected approaches are presented in an overview.

The paper adds to the synthesis of the 2922 INURA-Annual Meeting held in Luxembourg and includes a reflection on the practice of comparative analysis and exchange of experience in urban policy and planning. The informed statements made by INURA-members on related issues in Luxembourg are considered rather different (and very much to the point), compared to the often less informed praise by visitors from outside. This peculiar outcome of 'relationality' from outside may hinder a more effective policy response to be developed within the country.

This paper’s main argument is that housing financialisation can be understood as a set of intertwined digital/material processes, and that resisting housing financialisation requires activism that recognises and capitalises on this dynamic. Drawing from Desiree Fields’ (2017a) work on urban struggles with financialisation, this conceptual argument is unpacked through a case study of post-crash Dublin, an urban space reshaped by housing financialisation and struggles resisting it. Housing has been a key subject of contention in post-crash Dublin and activists’ digital/material struggles illustrate how digital technologies and platforms can be and are appropriated to resist housing financialisation. The paper traces the intertwining of housing financialisation, resistance, and the digital in post-crash Dublin and argues that future research on platform real estate, urbanism, and automated landlord practices must take seriously the ambivalent opportunities, agency, and counter narratives that housing activists create through their digital/material practices.

Mit dem Begriff der Metropolregion werden traditionell große Verdichtungsräume und ihr Einzugsbereich bezeichnet, gelegentlich auch Millionenstädte. Im europäischen Raum wurde der Begriff der Metropolregion seit den 1990er Jahren für die räumliche Planung und Forschung zunehmend relevant. Lag die klassische Rolle der Raumforschung im Metropolenkontext bei Fragen der Identifikation, Abgrenzung und inhaltlichen Bestimmung von Raumeinheiten, wurde die Metropolregion zunehmend zum Gegenstand räumlicher Entwicklungspolitik gemacht. Dazu bediente man sich einer diskursiven Rahmung, eines framings, das spezifische Assoziationen um diesen Begriff konstruierte: die Verbindung von Großstadt und Moderne, die Konnotation von Region mit Wachstum und Wettbewerbsfähigkeit, der Anschluss der Raumplanung an den Geist der Zeit. Mehr als 25 Jahre nach Einführung der Metropolregionen als Kategorie der deutschen Raumordnung bietet sich eine kritische Reflektion dieser Praxis an: Welchen Einfluss hat diese Rahmung auf politische Diskurse ausgeübt, welcher Regionsbegriff wurde zugrunde gelegt, wie wurde diese Setzung empirisch begründet? Auf diese Weise werden das Metropolenkonzept und sein diskursives framing problematisiert. Außerdem wird gefragt, ob es alternative wissenschaftliche Ansätze zur Analyse des Wandels von der Region zur Metropolregion gibt.

The Common European Asylum System aims to establish common standards for refugee status determination among EU Member States. Combining insights from legal and political geography we bring the depth and scale of this challenge into sharp relief. Drawing on interviews and a detailed ethnography of asylum adjudication involving over 850 in-person asylum appeal observations, we point towards practical differences in the spatio-temporality, materiality and logistics of asylum appeal processes as they are operationalised in seven European countries. Our analysis achieves three things. Firstly, we identify a key zone of differences at the level of concrete, everyday implementation that has largely escaped academic attention, which allows us to critically assess the notion of harmonisation of asylum policies in new ways. Secondly, drawing on legal- and political-geographical concepts, we offer a way to conceptualise this zone by paying attention to the spatio-temporality, materiality and logistics it involves. Thirdly, we offer critical legal logistics as a new direction for scholarship in legal geography and beyond that promises to prise open the previously obscured mechanics of contemporary legal systems.

This paper describes the process and findings of a critical evaluation conducted for a custom-made Location based game (LBG) designed to support reflection on social history. We use a mixed-method protocol to answer the following research questions: “Can a LBG be designed to stimulate situated reflection on social history topics? and “What form and type of reflections can occur when participating in a LBG? Using an innovative approach that took inspiration from the field of museum studies and computer science. We chose a Think-aloud protocol to conduct an evaluation in Valletta, Malta and adapted the Remind study protocol to explore participant experience in Luxembourg. We combined transcripts from both sets of experiments wiith user-generated content to complete a systematic analysis using a predefined set of qualitative codes. We were able to identify that LBG can support reflection on social history topics but the depth of and type of reflection depends on the social history content, the individual locations in the city, and personal connections players are able to make to both.

This paper explores possible responses to some of the main challenges associated with conducting elite and expert interviews as part of qualitative research in human geography. Drawing on the example of the dynamic fintech industry, the paper outlines some similarities and differences between elite and expert interviews, and uses this to identify and discuss possible responses. Against this backdrop, the paper also reflects on advantages and disadvantages of using the professional social networking site LinkedIn as a research aid for sampling and contacting interviewees as well as for interview preparation. The paper is anticipated to be of interest to those conducting qualitative research involving limited subject sample sizes who are potentially difficult to find.

Le télétravail imposé par la pandémie n’est pas sans soulever un certain nombre de questions (juridiques, sociales, fiscales notamment) liées à la présence de la frontière entre le lieu de résidence et le lieu de travail. Par ailleurs, dans un contexte tendu par les problèmes de mobilité et de congestion, une autre forme de travail à distance tend à se développer ces dernières années: les espaces de Coworking.

Recently, the notion of spatial justice has been discussed as a possible conceptual foundation for rethinking EU Cohesion Policy. While scholars have adopted a dual distributive and procedural understanding of spatial justice, the paper argues that, applied to cross-border areas, such a conceptualisation is challenged to explain how the border contributes to disparities. We argue that actively questioning the role of law is paramount for better examination of the dynamics within border areas. An understanding of spatial justice informed by legal geography allows examination of how law fosters and impedes movement across borders. The paper presents three recent examples where policy representatives from affected communities have fought to adapt legal provisions to cross-border spatiality. Whether such initiatives increased border communities’ capacities to shape their own development (i.e. European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation) or not yet (i.e. co-development at the Lorraine-Luxembourg border; European Cross-Border Mechanism), these examples show that analysing EUropean borderlands as a spatiolegal category helps understanding of how space and law constantly struggle with one another, and how spatial justice emerges from a movement out of this conflict. The paper concludes by discussing the practical and conceptual implications of combining legal geography and spatial justice for analysing EU Borderlands.

La Grande Région SaarLorLux se caractérise par d’intenses flux de travailleurs frontaliers qui représentent près d’un quart des flux de travail frontalier de l’ensemble de l’UE. La pandémie de Covid-19 et le confinement total débuté en mars 2020 ont eu pour conséquence de développer le recours massif au télétravail y compris dans cet espace traversé par plusieurs frontières. Cette plongée brutale et soudaine dans le télétravail a attiré l’attention sur cette forme d’organisation du travail, assez peu utilisée et étudiée jusqu’alors. La question se pose désormais de voir comment va évoluer cette forme de travail dans un contexte transfrontalier, compte tenu des multiples règlementations en vigueur (fiscales, sécurité sociale…), par ailleurs diverses selon les pays concernés (de travail comme de résidence). Le débat a notamment été relancé avec la récente résolution européenne déposée à l’Assemblée Nationale française visant à l’augmentation du télétravail des travailleurs frontaliers et à mener une réflexion européenne sur leur statut (texte adopté n°819). Il importe alors de tenir compte des effets du télétravail sur les travailleurs frontaliers en place mais aussi sur les évolutions du travail frontalier. Doit-on s’attendre à une forte hausse du travail frontalier si le télétravail se généralise ? Comment seront alors impactées les mobilités des frontaliers ? L’objectif de la présente communication est de dresser une liste des effets potentiels du télétravail sur les mobilités (quotidiennes et résidentielles) dans un contexte transfrontalier. Comment le télétravail peut-il impacter les pratiques de mobilités des frontaliers ? constitue-t-il une solution envisageable et réaliste face aux problèmes de congestion autour du Luxembourg ? ou y a-t-il des effets-rebonds qui nuanceraient cet impact du télétravail sur les mobilités? Autant de questions qui constituent une étape préliminaire avant toute tentative de mesure ou de prise en compte de l’effet télétravail dans l’analyse du marché du travail transfrontalier dans la Grande Région. Méthodologie En partant d’une analyse de la littérature sur le sujet, souvent abordé de manière « nationale » donc sans tenir compte des particularités liées aux frontières, nous complèterons ce tour d’horizon par nos propres travaux sur la question et notre connaissance du contexte transfrontalier. Principaux résultats obtenus ou attendus Une réflexion générale sera engagée quant aux effets attendus du télétravail sur les mobilités transfrontalières, à la fois au niveau macro, meso et micro. Il importera de distinguer les impacts sur les travailleurs frontaliers déjà en place et sur ceux qui sont potentiellement candidats à un emploi transfrontalier, mais aussi de tenir compte du fait que tous les emplois ne sont pas télétravaillables par exemple (selon le secteur ou le type d’emploi). Cet inventaire détaillé nous permettra de conclure sur l’intérêt de la prise en compte de la variable télétravail dans les futures analyses du travail frontalier, mais également nous fournira des pistes d’études concrètes à réaliser.

The notion of “vulnerability” occupies a central role in academic literature, policymaking, humanitarian debates, and everyday discourses on migration and asylum. Its popularity has led some academics and practitioners to use “vulnerability” as a self-explanatory condition or phenomenon. However, a common and systematic understanding of the concept is still missing, and the moral and political meaning often ascribed to this notion may have (un)intended detrimental consequences for those migrants deemed vulnerable. Thus, this paper sets out to critically unpack and highlight the complexities hidden behind this notion in order to provide a conceptual analysis of vulnerability in the context of migration. We do so by (1) providing an overview of definitions of vulnerability across different fields of research, (2) identifying common conceptualizations or types of vulnerability and discussing their implications, and (3) highlighting possible negative societal and psychological consequences of its implementation in the context of migration. Finally, we propose (4) a new conceptual model for understanding vulnerability in the context of migration, showing how this notion can become a useful analytical tool in migration research.

In 2015 and 2016, the enormous increase in asylum seekers travelling along the Balkan Route confronted the Member States of the European Union with an exceptional pressure on national asylum systems. Since then academic literature has revealed a reappraisal of the Common European Asylum System at regulative and policy implementation level, notably regarding the fair distribution of asylum seekers across Member States and regions. Yet we know very little about the locational choices of forced migrants or how those choices evolved and transformed during their journey. In this paper, we aim to shed light on those decision-making processes and (individual, subjective) locational choices based on the aspiration-ability model, drawing from a series of qualitative interviews with migrants held in Luxembourg and Germany in the context of the H2020 project CEASEVAL. We focus on the migrants’ journeys to their actual recipient countries, highlighting mobility trajectories from the moment of first departure and on the process of decision-making regarding their choice of location. Then, we examine further mobility aspirations, which may lead to secondary mobility within or out of the country of residence. In the concluding section, we discuss the consequences of our findings for migration and asylum politics against the background of the “autonomy of migration” framework. * This article belongs to a special issue on "Refugee Migration to Europe – Challenges and Potentials for Cities and Regions".

This article outlines the community economies of Esch-sur-Alzette, the ‘second city’ of Luxembourg. ‘Community economies’ – an approach outlined by J.K. Gibson-Graham – draws attention to alternative narratives of economic development and the representation of economic identity. Despite (the Grand Duchy of) Luxembourg’s reputation as a European Union centre, with substantial finance and tax activity, Esch-sur-Alzette is a post-industrial and multilingual melting pot. The alternative narrative here is of the multiple community-based organisations and movements in Esch-sur-Alzette: an energy cooperative, urban gardening, an upcycling clothing factory, a local food shop and restaurant, and vibrant civil society discussions and interventions in (inter)national politics. Civil society, while central to both understandings of grassroots environmental action and the community economies framework of Gibson-Graham, takes on quite a different flavour in Luxembourg. This article then takes the case of Luxembourg to reread the relationship of the state to the so-called third sector, in doing so defending the political possibilities of community economies.

‘Smart cities’ has become a hegemonic concept in urban discourses, despite substantial criticism presented by scholarly research and activism. The aim of this research was to understand what happens when one of the big digital corporations enters the field of real estate and land use development and urban planning, how existing institutions respond to this, and how modes of urban governance are affected. Alphabet Inc.’s plans for Toronto’s waterfront provided insights into these questions. Our investigations traced a complex web of place-making practices that involved all levels of government, the general public, and networks of actors throughout the private sector. Methodologically, the discourse was reconstructed with local fieldwork, interviews with key actors, participating in tours and public meetings, and secondary sources. It was found that Alphabet Inc.’s plan to build a world-class digital city contained some lessons for urban studies and urban planning practice. First, Alphabet Inc.’s plans, which unfolded amidst initiatives to expand the knowledge economy, confirmed concerns that the trajectory of neoliberal, market-driven land use and speculation along the waterfront remains unchanged. Second, digital infrastructures are potentially a Trojan Horse. Third, it was seen that municipalities and their modes of urban planning are vulnerable to the political economic manoeuvrings of large corporate power. Fourth, Alphabet Inc. operates as a post-political package driven by a new coalition of politics, where the smart city is sold as a neutral technology. The controversies surrounding the project, however, stirred a civic discourse that might signal a return of the political.

Die kritische Entwicklung des Immobilienmarktes schlägt direkt auf den Wohnungsmarkt durch. Dies hat das Thema zum „Thema“ gemacht, das heißt, es wird problematisiert. Das ist einerseits neu, andererseits offenbaren sich große Lücken im Diskurs. Das Sagbare und das Nicht-Sagbare trennen Welten.

This article employs the analytical perspective of logistics to explore a key, yet quite overlooked, aspect of the functioning of the EU border regime: the reception and associated territorial distribution of newly arrived asylum seekers. Drawing on qualitative data collected at the height of the ‘refugee reception crisis’ in multiple contexts in Italy and Sweden, the article shows how reception is undergoing a process of ‘logistification’ . In this process, organisational and logistical concerns prevail over the care for those who are assisted, and reception is turned into a logistical matter of moving and accommodating asylum seekers. Crucial to this process of ‘logistification’ is the warehousing of asylum seekers – an art of government that seeks to objectify asylum seekers through their depersonalisation, victimisation and (im)mobilisation. The article argues that the ‘logistification’ of reception not only has dehumanising effects on asylum seekers, but also exposes the attempt to make profit out their management and transfer. This creates the conditions for the development of a reception industry in which the very presence of asylum seekers is valorised for the profit of a whole range of actors who ensure the reproduction, transfer, knowledge and control of those hosted in reception facilities.

Luxembourg is characterized by phenomena of mobility that include cross-border commuters and residential migrants. While both groups have been mainly examined from a socioeconomic perspective, this paper adopts a sociocultural approach. We will focus on the question of the extent to which cross-border mobility in everyday life promotes cross-border lifeworlds. This will involve examining people’s social contacts at their place of work and/or place of residence as well as the spatial organization of practices of the everyday life of both groups. The paper gives insights into everyday lives at the EU’s internal borders, whose organization into nation states is subordinate and at the same time constitutive.

This article explores how transaction information is a fundamental element enabling and fostering global flows of money. Financial systems, constructed around account-based money, require infrastructure, which is separated into two parts: messaging and settlement, performed via trusted agents. This separation has allowed the geographical expansion of banking, and to this day constitutes a key architecture of increasingly global networks of money. Focusing on the correspondent banking system and the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, this article demonstrates the workings of this infrastructure in cross-border payments and in enacting economic sanctions. This sociotechnical infrastructure is a crucial yet overlooked area of global banking, which makes global economic and financial activity possible in the first place. Importantly, by analysing the organizational architecture of the global payments system and including the actors and agencies within it, we elucidate the (changing) relationships between data/information, geographies and power, contributing to the formation of a literature that conceptualizes financial infrastructure.

The social spatial geographies of telecommunications and their infrastructures have long interested scholars in the social sciences, and in urban geography specifically. This paper focuses on data centers. Much effort has been placed in preserving the notion that data centers are ‘clouds’, a terminology that obfuscates the real human geographies of cyberplaces. In this map-making exercise, we visualize the sociopolitical human geographies of data centers, and provoke the reader to consider the impacts that data centers have on residents and their environments. The maps shown in this paper suggest four trends. First, hyperscale data center owners are building near large waterways, signifying a shift in location preferences. Second, data centers stress local administrations, financing, and availability of upstream resources, as hyperscale data centers step up their input needs. Third, data center development is state-led. Fourth the competition for data center industries unfolds across a multi-level governance context.

Cette étude transfrontalière s’intéresse aux jeunes, qui n’ont pratiquement pas été pris en compte dans les analyses qui ont suivi la pandémie. Les auteurs ont analysé en un premier temps les conséquences de la pandémie pour la formation professionnelle en alternance à la frontière franco-allemande. À cet effet ils s’appuient sur des interviews qu’ils ont réalisées eux-mêmes et qui permettent un aperçu des dynamiques de la coopération transfrontalière dans le domaine professionnel pour cette période qui a été marquée non seulement par le Covid-19, mais aussi par une réorganisation institutionnelle. Par la suite les auteurs présentent les résultats d’un sondage qu’ils ont réalisé auprès d’étudiants en licence et en master suivant des programmes d’études à proximité de la frontière au sein de la Grande Région. Ce travail a e´té coordonné par l’Université de la Sarre et informe sur la mobilité physique et virtuelle des étudiants, sur leurs contacts sociaux ainsi que sur les besoins en termes de conseil et de soutien pour les années 2020 et 2021. Les résultats sont illustrés à travers des exemples éloquents évoquant les expériences des étudiants du master trinational en Border Studies de l’UniGR. The cross-border study looks at young people who, in retrospect, were granted virtually no consideration in the pandemic. First of all, the authors analyse the impact of the pandemic on vocational training across the German-French border. They base their findings on a number of interviews, which provide insights into the dynamics of cross-border cooperation in the vocational field at a time which was characterised not only by Covid-19, but also by institutional restructuring. The authors then go on to present the results of their own survey of students on bachelor's and master's courses in the border areas of the Greater Region. The survey was coordinated by Saarland University and provides information on the physical and virtual mobility of students, on their social contacts and their counselling and support needs during 2020 and 2021. The results are illustrated with concrete examples from students on the tri-national UniGR master's course in Border Studies. Die grenzüberschreitende Studie wendet sich jungen Menschen zu, die in der Nachbetrachtung der Pandemie kaum Berücksichtigung fanden. Die Autor:innen analysieren zunächst die Pandemiefolgen für die duale Berufsausbildung an der deutsch-französischen Grenze. Dabei stützen sie sich auf eigene Interviews, die Einblicke in die Dynamiken der grenzüberschreitenden Kooperation im Berufswesen geben in einer Zeit, die nicht nur von Covid-19, sondern auch von einer institutionellen Neuordnung geprägt war. Im Weiteren stellen die Autor:innen die Ergebnisse einer eigenen Befragung von Studierenden grenznaher Bachelor- und Master-Studienprogramme in der Großregion vor. Sie wurde an der Universität des Saarlandes koordiniert und gibt Auskunft über die physische und virtuelle Mobilität von Studierenden, über ihre sozialen Kontakte sowie den Beratungs- und Unterstützungsbedarf in den Jahren 2020 und 2021. Mit anschaulichen Beispielen aus dem trinationalen UniGR-Master in Border Studies werden die Ergebnisse illustriert.

Post-Growth Geographies examines the spatial relations of diverse and alternative economies between growth-oriented institutions and multiple socio-ecological crises. The book brings together conceptual and empirical contributions from geography and its neighbouring disciplines and offers different perspectives on the possibilities, demands and critiques of post-growth transformation. Through case studies and interviews, the contributions combine voices from activism, civil society, planning and politics with current theoretical debates on socio-ecological transformation.

To whom do the dead belong? The French Foreign Legion exemplifies a modern military conundrum: how to reconcile loyal and patriotic duty with mercenary service or, in neutral terms, military labour. This article investigates soldierly funeral culture in the long nineteenth century, with a focus on the entangled histories of Luxembourg and France. The Foreign Legion’s transnational recruitment makes this armed force a unique case study to explore military commemoration across state borders, honouring the dead and the living alike. Since its establishment to fight outside mainland France, rooted in the conquest of Algeria (1830–1857), the Legion has been the only branch of the French military whose members swear allegiance not to France, but to the corps itself: its motto is Legio Patria Nostra (»The Legion is our Homeland«). As a military parallel society and temporary »ersatz nation«, the Legion has elaborated a specific death cult, which has both a corporeal (body-centred, individual) and a sur-real (transcendent, communal) dimension. The two dimensions cannot be rigidly delimited: they clearly overlap and can be shared with other nations, as the case of Luxembourg demonstrates.

The issue of land and its ownership remains under-explored in relation to the housing affordability crisis. We argue that the concentrated ownership of residential land affects housing production in Luxembourg through the interplay of landowner and developer wealth accumulation strategies. Drawing on expert interviews, we first show that the country’s growth-centred ecology has produced a negotiated planning regime that does little to manage the pace of residential development. Through an investigation of the development of 71 large-scale residential projects since 2007, we then identify the private land-based wealth accumulation strategies this facilitative planning regime enables. This analysis of land registry data identifies land hoarding, land banking and the strategic use of the planning system. The Luxembourg case – with its extremes of land concentration, low taxes and public disengagement from land – provides a glimpse at the influence of landowner and property developer strategies on housing affordability free of the usual mediating impact of the planning system.

This editorial introduces a thematic issue of Urban Planning on recent developments in Beirut, Lebanon. It emphasises the multiple crises the city has been undergoing for some time, which include an enduring political and economic crisis, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and most recently the devastating impact of the blast that happened in the port of Beirut on 4th August 2020. The editorial outlines the specific challenges resulting from these crises and addresses the concept of resilience, which is taken up by the articles included in this issue.

This article diagnoses and critiques a type of governmentality associated with waiting during protracted asylum appeal procedures by drawing upon data from a multi-methodological study of asylum adjudication in Europe. Focusing on Austria, Germany and Italy, we explore the use of integration-related considerations in asylum appeal processes by looking at the ways in which these considerations permeate judges’ decision-making, particularly, but not exclusively, on the granting of national, non-EU harmonised protection statuses. Building on insights from the literature on conditional integration we question the implicit sociopolitical biases and moral assumptions that underpin this permeation. We show that the use of integration-related considerations in asylum appeals transforms migrant waiting into a period of probation during which rejected asylum seekers’ conducts are governed and tested in relation to the use of time. More than simply waiting patiently, rejected asylum seekers are expected to wait productively, whereby productivity is assessed through the neoliberal imperatives of entrepreneurship, autonomy and selfimprovement. We thus contribute to scholarship on migrant waiting by showing how time is capitalised by state authorities even when – and actually because – it offers opportunities for migrants.

Our article addresses two aspects of young migrants’ understandings of integration: their own ideas of what integration is, and their perception of the destination society’s concepts and expectations regarding their integration. We analyze qualitative interviews which were conducted in the Horizon 2020 project MIMY, in Germany, Luxembourg and Norway, using the grounded theory methodology. Our exploration shows that the young migrants’ awareness of the existing ideas of integration surrounding them creates a complex reflective interaction between their own ideas and the (perceived) expectations from society. We identified aspects of consonance, where young migrants’ ideas coincide with the expectations they perceive. More importantly, however, our research has discovered that the youth experience tensions and dissonance between their own ideas of what integration should be and the concepts and expectations regarding integration they feel confronted with by society. Our analysis revealed that while young migrants’ understandings of integration are very close to state-of-the-art scientific conceptualizations of integration, this view is not matched by the meaning of integration they perceive around them.

We develop an epidemionomic model that jointly analyzes the health and economic responses to the COVID-19 crisis and to the related containment and public health policy measures implemented in Luxembourg. The model has been used to produce nowcasts and forecasts at various stages of the crisis. We focus here on two key moments in time, namely the deconfinement period following the first lockdown, and the onset of the second wave. In May 2020, we predicted a high risk of a second wave that was mainly explained by the resumption of social life, low participation in large-scale testing, and reduction in teleworking practices. Simulations conducted 5 months later reveal that managing the second wave with moderately coercive measures has been epidemiologically and economically effective. Assuming a massive third (or fourth) wave will not materialize in 2021, the real GDP loss due to the second wave will be smaller than 0.4 percentage points in 2020 and 2021.

We determine the functional form and scaling law of radial artificial land use profiles in 300 European functional urban areas (FUAs). These profiles, starting from a fully artificial surface in the city center, decrease exponentially, the faster the smaller the city. More precisely, the characteristic decrease distance scales like the square root of total population, meaning that the artificial surface of cities is proportional to their population. This also means that the amount of artificial land per capita is independent of city size, and that larger cities are not more or less parsimonious in terms of land use than smaller ones.

There is limited evidence on the time-varying effects of migration on the psychological well-being of children who stay behind in African contexts. This study is the first to employ panel data to examine this nexus in the context of Ghana. Data were collected in 2013, 2014, and 2015 from school-going children in the age group of 12-21 years. Using children’s self-reports, an analysis was conducted separately for boys (N=781) and girls (N=705). Results indicate that girls and boys with the mother away internally or internationally are equally or more likely to have higher levels of psychological well-being when compared to boys and girls of nonmigrants. Higher level of well-being is observed amongst girls when parents migrate and divorce. However, parental migration and divorce is more likely to increase the psychological vulnerability of boys. In Ghana, the psychological well-being of children is nuanced by which parent has migrated, marital status of migrant parent, and the gender of the child.

Cross-border cooperation, border regions, soft spaces? This special issue approaches cross-border informal planning processes in cross-border regions by analysing them from a perspective that combines networks, governance and territorialization. Such a relational perspective will be developed by papers which deal with a variety of European cross-border regions and empirical evidence related to the nexus of networks, governance and territorialization.

Research on the governance of refugees has until recently remained conceptualized with the national perspective as a starting point. This article compares asylum governance at the local level between Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, focusing on the often sensitive and highly debated issue of reception and accommodation. The central idea is to determine convergences and divergences of local reception structures and efforts, and how they are linked to the governance levels situated above them. Despite municipalities having been greatly affected by, and having shaped in practice, reception and integration processes of asylum seekers and refugees, so far there has been little in terms of comparative research across countries in Europe. Our findings emerging from the comparison suggest that top-down implementations of asylum reception have created numerous problems and protest on the ground, especially when the local population and local stakeholders were not involved in the decision-making process. On the one hand, the case studies show that within each national setting, the local regimes and agencies can shape divergent reception outcomes in terms of integrative or disintegrative policies. On the other hand, converging developments in the local cases across national contexts, such as the impact of the local political climate, suggest the crucial impact of local reception regimes and agencies, notwithstanding varying regulatory frameworks and procedures. We thus underline the importance of local-to-local comparison, and not only national-to-national, when it comes to analysing refugee reception. Forschungen zur Implementierung von Asylpolitik verbleiben meist auf der nationalen Betrachtungsebene. Dieser Artikel nimmt einen lokalen Fokus ein, um Aufnahmepolitiken von Asylsuchenden in Deutschland, Luxemburg und den Niederlanden zu vergleichen. Der Beitrag hat zum Ziel, konvergierende und divergierende Strategien, Praktiken und Effekte zu identifizieren und die Verbindungen zu den übergeordneten Politikebenen zu analysieren. Obgleich die kommunale Ebene ganz wesentlich die Aufnahme von Asylsuchenden verantwortet und individuelle Aufnahme- und Integrationspraktiken entwickelt, gibt es dazu bislang kaum länderübergreifende vergleichende Forschung. Die Befunde unserer vergleichenden Lokalforschung zeigen, dass die zentrale Steuerung der Aufnahme Asylsuchender auf kommunaler Ebene verschiedene Probleme und Protesthaltungen erzeugt hat, insbesondere wenn die Bevölkerung und die Entscheidungsträger vor Ort nicht in den Entscheidungsprozess einbezogen wurden. Es zeigt sich, dass innerhalb des identischen nationalen Rahmens Aufnahmepolitiken höchst unterschiedliche Resultate zeitigen können, z.B. durch die Implementierung integrativer oder partikularer Politikansätze. Andererseits weisen konvergierende Entwicklungen in unseren Fallbeispielen auf die Bedeutung lokaler Aushandlungsprozesse und Diskurse hin, die sich trotz unterschiedlicher nationaler Regulierungen und Rahmenbedingungen in vergleichbarer Weise entwickeln können. Dadurch unterstreicht dieser Beitrag die Bedeutung von länderübergreifenden Lokalstudien und die generelle Bedeutung der lokalen Ebene in der vergleichenden Implementierungsforschung.