The dynamics of cross‐border labor: Commuting from the Dutch to the German part of the Euregio Meuse‐Rhine, 1960-2000

Abstract

In spite of diverging developments on national labor markets across Europe and efforts to facilitate labor mobility across its internal borders in the late 1990s, cross‐border commuting is of only marginal significance in the European Union. Research considering the current situation holds that socio‐cultural and psychological factors play a critical role in the (non‐)realization of cross‐border labor. Nevertheless, European border people need not always have been this immobile. Drawing on aggregated figures and contemporary reports, this article presents a historical account of commuting from the Dutch to the German part of the Euregio Meuse‐Rhine (EMR) between 1960 and 2000, and the way it was embedded in its economic context. It will be demonstrated that although cross‐border labor from the Dutch to the German part of the EMR had become a marginal phenomenon in the 1980s and 1990s, in the 1960s and early 1970s it was rather common. This was the result of the dynamic interaction between (socio‐)economic and “softer” issues, related to the existence of the Dutch‐German border. It is claimed that a historical approach to cross‐border labor helps unfolding its dynamic nature and contextual embeddedness.

Notes

Bouwens is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Culture at Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands.