SLEEPING ABROAD BUT WORKING AT HOME: CROSS‐BORDER RESIDENTIAL MOBILITY BETWEEN TRANSNATIONALISM AND (RE)BORDERING

Cross‐border residential mobility (CBRM) has so far largely been approached from a transnational perspective. However, recent developments in border studies and transnationalism give rise to certain doubts. While border studies have come to include mental borders next to physical borderlands, transnationalism today refers not just to cross‐border movements but also to identities trans‐cending the national. But border studies have shown that the increased crossing of borders is not necessarily coupled with their diminished significance. CBRM is a particularly interesting phenomenon as it entails the continuous crossing of a physical border, but the question is whether it also implies the erosion of mental borders and the emergence of transnational ties. While drawing on experiences from parallel cases, my study focuses on Poles from Szczecin moving just across the boundary to Vorpommern, Germany. Some are integrating there, but their large majority appears to carry on with everyday life in Poland as before moving. This settlement has triggered considerable resentment among local Germans, who as a reaction mark the borderland discursively and physically. As my survey shows, while both groups regularly cross the physical border, many even among the cross‐border residents consider it as a necessary dividing line or prefer cooperation to be reserved to some activities. Hence, unlike longdistance migration leading either to diaspora identities or to gradual dissolution in the majority culture, CBRM appears as a specific form of international migration where the physical proximity allows such intensive links with the country of origin that transnational effects are mitigated.