Work and residential cross-border mobilities for people working in Luxembourg : developments and impacts

Cross-border employment and residence are becoming a very important type of mobility in border regions.
In the Greater Region, consisting of Luxembourg, Lorraine, Wallonia, Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate, around 213,000 people live and work in two different countries. Most of the cross-border commuters are employed in Luxembourg, representing 44% of the salaried population of Luxembourg. Additionally, the Greater Region is a space of cross-border residential mobility; meaning some people commuting to Luxembourg are former residents of Luxembourg and vice versa.
The aim of this paper is to examine the development of the cross-border mobility phenomenon over the last 20 years, as well as to present principal cross-border residential flows of people working in Luxembourg. Furthermore, the paper discusses the impacts these flows have had on the Greater Region. A change has been recognized in the direction of migration flows. Whereas in the 1990s, most of cross-border residential migration was oriented towards Luxembourg, the direction has now changed towards the neighboring countries. Now some German, French and Belgian villages are impacted by these migration trends regarding e.g. an increase of housing prices, different languages, integration and schooling. Furthermore, from a conceptual point of view, it is difficult to describe the reality of the cross-border phenomenon due to the diversification of profiles and trajectories.
This paper consists of two methodological strands, showing on one hand different cross-border developments based on large quantitative datasets and on the other hand giving an impression of impacts and challenges caused by cross-border migration based on qualitative interviews.