Moving and interacting across borders: a people-centric approach to reimagine border regions
Abstract deadline: 10 May 2025
Manuscript deadline: 15 October 2025
Border regions are generally defined as regions that are geographically close to a state border and interact with and are influenced by regions on the other side. Cross-border interaction across economic, governance, social and cultural perspectives can form cross-border regions – regions that function as one system across the border (Jackson et al. 2004). Due to these valuable interactions, border regions can serve as resources (Sohn 2014) and living laboratories to engender territorial integration at a wider geographical scale (Hooper & Kramsch 2004).
However, research often defines and examines border regions based on top-down, pre-assigned administrative units for ease of policymaking, without considering where, when and how cross-border interactions occur in reality. For example, in the European Union border regions consist of “NUTS 3” administrative units aligning with a national border. While institutional cooperation in private and public sectors is examined (Blatter 2004; Dörry & Decoville 2014), cross-border interactions of people are less often studied. Rephrasing Hägerstrand’s seminal paper (1970), we could ask: “what about people in border region science”?
Twenty-five years ago, the special issue “Borders, Border Regions and Territoriality: Contradictory Meanings, Changing Significance” published in Regional Studies foresaw that research on “space of places” would give way to “space of flows” amid an emerging borderless world (Anderson & O’Dowd 1999; p.594). Indeed, recent attempts have started to try to redefine cross-border regions based on interaction potential proxied through the number of people residing within a certain distance or travel time from the state border (Jakubowski et al. 2022; Bertram et al. 2023), and based on border permeability (Medeiros 2019). Initial efforts are also made to reimagine functional border regions as cross-border living areas (Coletti et al. 2024) and operationalize it based on actual cross-border mobilities of people (Drevon et al. 2018; Järv et al. 2023; Aagesen et al. 2023). Despite these recent efforts, a people-centric perspective on (and “space of flows” of) border regions remain under-examined, and the multilayered nature of border regions is less acknowledged in research and practice.
This special issue seeks to challenge the current status quo in the definition of and research on border regions. It calls for a rethinking and redefinition of (functional) border regions, providing a more nuanced understanding of the various layers that contribute to the functioning of border regions. The collection of papers will focus on border regions from a people-centric perspective, examining flows of mobilities and social interactions. This advances theoretical and conceptual developments in research, and policy debates, and supports evidence-based policymaking for border regions.
The special issue will welcome studies that make the following contributions to border region research.
First, address the perspective of people in border region research by focusing on cross-border interactions of people (e.g. local communities) and their social practices and spatial mobilities, which form the functional border region. This includes cross-border commuting, residential mobility, shopping and consumption of services, visiting friends and relatives as well as sustaining social networks across the border.
Second, mitigate the theory-practice gap by tackling the discrepancy between current empirical research based on predefined nation-state administrative delineations of border regions and theoretical advancements on transnational spaces (e.g. “soft spaces”, “fuzzy boundaries”) and on functional regions regarding “spaces of flows” (be it people, goods, information etc).
Third, foster the discussion on the nexus between national and supranational regional policy and governance in the context of border regions, and explore how new approaches can be implemented in the planning, development and governance of functional border regions, not only in the European Union but around the globe.
We are interested in papers that address the following (non-exhaustive) topics:
- How to theoretically (re)define border regions through spatial and social interactions of people and “spaces of flows”?
- How to empirically measure and analyse functional border regions from a people-centric perspective?
- What new insights about functional border regions can a people-centric perspective provide?
- How (functional) cross-border regions in a wide range of geographic contexts, especially those understudied in existing border region research (i.e. outside of the European Union) take place?
- How data and inferred information from a people-centric perspective can support policy, planning and governance of border regions from various geographical as well as social and economic contexts?
We invite submissions from researchers in the fields of geography, regional studies, urban planning, public and regional policy, and related fields. Conceptual, theoretical and empirical submissions (both qualitative and quantitative) are welcome. We especially encourage studies from outside Europe focusing on different border regions and contexts around the globe.
References
Aagesen, H. W., Järv, O., & Gerber, P. (2023). The effect of COVID-19 on cross- border mobilities of people and functional border regions: The Nordic case study from Twitter data. Geografska Annaler: Series B, Hum. Geography, 105(4), 356-378. 10.1080/04353684.2022.2101135
James Anderson & Liam O’Dowd (1999). Borders, Border Regions and Territoriality: Contradictory Meanings, Changing Significance. Regional Studies, 33:7, 593-604, 10.1080/00343409950078648
Bertram, D., Chilla, T., & Hippe, S. (2023). Cross-border mobility: Rail or road? Space- time-lines as an evidence base for policy debates. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 39(5), 913-930. 10.1080/08865655.2023.2249917
Blatter, J. (2004). From ‘spaces of place’ to ‘spaces of flows’? Territorial and functional governance in cross-border regions in Europe and North America. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 28: 530-548. 10.1111/j.0309-1317.2004.00534.x
Coletti, R., Chilla, T., & Salerno, G. (2024). Cross-border living areas as popularisation of cross-border integration?: Debating ‘Bacino di vita’and ‘Bassin de vie’. European Journal of Spatial Development, 21(4). 10.5281/zenodo.13836891
Drevon, G., Gerber, P., Klein, O., & Enaux, C. (2018). Measuring Functional Integration by Identifying the Trip Chains and the Profles of Cross-Border Workers: Empirical Evidences from Luxembourg. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 33 (4), 549:568. 10.1080/08865655.2016.1257362
Dörry, S., & A. Decoville (2016). Governance and Transportation Policy Networks in the Cross-Border Metropolitan Region of Luxembourg: A Social Network Analysis. European Urban and Regional Studies 23: 69–85. 10.1177/0969776413490528
Hägerstrand, T. (1970). What About People in Regional Science?. Papers of the Regional Science Association 24: 6–21. 10.1007/BF01936872
Hooper, B. & Kramsch, O. (2004). Cross-Border Governance in the European Union. Research in Transnationalism. Routledge.
Jackson, P., Crang P., & Dwyer, C. (2004). Transnational Spaces. Routledge.
Jakubowski, A., Trykacz, K., Studzieniecki, T. & Skibiński, J. (2022). Identifying Cross-Border Functional Areas: Conceptual Background and Empirical Findings from Polish Borderlands. European Planning Studies 30(12): 2433–55. 10.1080/09654313.2021.1958760
Järv, O., Aagesen, H. W., Väisänen, T., & Massinen, S. (2022). Revealing mobilities of people to understand cross-border regions: Insights from Luxembourg using social media data. European Planning Studies, 31(8), 1754-1775. 10.1080/09654313. 2022.2108312
Medeiros, E. (2019). Cross-Border transports and cross-border mobility in EU border regions. Case Studies on Transport Policy, 7(1), 1–12. 10.1016/j.cstp.2018.11.001
Sohn, C. (2014). Modelling Cross-Border Integration: The Role of Borders as a Resource. Geopolitics, 19 (3), 587:608. 10.1080/14650045.2014.913029
Submission Instructions
Authors interested in publishing in the Special Issue should email an abstract of about 500 words to Olle Järv (olle.jarv@helsinki.fi) by the 10th of May 2025, and after the first screening, the decision on abstract acceptance will be released by 26th of May 2025.
Full Manuscripts should be received by 15th of October 2025 for review and should be submitted via the journal’s online submission system. Please select the Special Issue title on submission. All submissions are subject to the journal’s usual, full peer review process.