New re-bordering left them alone and neglected: Czech cross-border commuters in German-Czech borderland Open Access

The article focuses on the impact of the new re-bordering, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, on the functional, ideational and institutional dimension of cross-border integration, as perceived by the Czech cross-border commuters employed on the German side of the Euroregion Elbe Labe. The interviews with forty cross-commuters showed that they were left alone in these times of re-bordering and became victims of non-coordination between Czechia and Germany. Yet, cross-border commuting seems to have survived the first pandemic waves and the German labour market will continue to attract the Czech workforce despite that fact the pandemic has introduced a major uncertainty associated with the border crossing. The pandemic has revealed the need for a functional system of the cross-border management in the period of crisis to protect cross-border commuters and provide them with better security.

A single market without internal barriers has been the very goal of European integration (Treaty of Rome/Single European Act). This major economic space has been functioning also thanks to the de facto elimination of physical borders in Europe. The single market is based upon four principal freedoms of movement of goods, services, capital and people. Article 45 of the Treaty of Functioning of the EU grants every EU citizen the right to move and reside freely within the EU territory. Having said that, it might sound as a surprise that cross-border employment, based on daily or weekly commuting to work across the national border, has not become a widespread phenomenon. While one third of the EU citizens lives in the border regions, only 2 million of Europeans – among the 199 million employed persons aged 20–64 years in the EU – are cross-border commuters, i.e. 1% of all those employed (People on the Move 2020) in the EU in 2019. This cross-border immobility (van Houtum and van de Velde 2004) has been caused by multiple factors, mainly by the language differences and a mental barrier associated therewith.

It is fair to say that cross-border commuting was on its rise in the EU in pre-pandemic years: the number of Europeans crossing the border to work in a neighbouring country, has increased by 94% compared to 2002 (Böhm and Opioła 2019). Nevertheless, the COVID-19 pandemic brough physical borders back to Europe and caused major rebordering. The covidfencing (Medeiros et al. 2020) has restricted all types of social activities, affecting the world of employment as well. National states decided to dramatically curb cross-border flows (e.g. Hennig 2020; Opiłowska 2020; Böhm 2021, 2022) and use the filter function of borders. Crossing the borders suddenly became complicated and somewhere even hardly possible. Cross-border commuters were the most severely hit by those closures. States closed their borders without taking into account the commuters’ labour law obligations (Jańczak 2020; Novotný 2021a). They justified those closures by the need to protect the public health, without reflecting the fact that many border regions in the EU are interconnected in many different ways (Medeiros et al. 2020).

Hence, the paper aims to identify the impacts of the re-bordering caused by the covidfencing on the cross-border commuters. To illustrate them, a case study will be used, analysing the situations of Czech cross-border commuters employed in Germany. The rebordering seems to have already throttled cross-border commuting or affected it substantially, and changed spatial perceptions of those commuters, who might have felt discriminated or being personae non gratae. This particular case study was chosen because Germany is a place of work to a substantial number of cross-border workers, where besides the Poles (121,500) and French (52,000) there were also around 50,000 Czech commuters working in 2019. This Czech-German case study should help us to confirm or disconfirm this assumption and identify any changes to this cross-border commuting. The aim is also to ascertain those factors of covidfencing that have been the most difficult for cross-border workers and those institutions/individuals/other entities that have advocated their interests in the borderland in question. Answers to these questions should assist in formulating recommendations for similar crises in future.

The article has the following structure: the introduction is followed by the theoretical framework used to study cross-border commuting. The next section specifies the methodology employed in this paper. Subsequently, the research outcomes are presented and discussed. In conclusion, the primary research questions are answered and a set of recommendations formulated for the benefit of cross-border commuters.

All three dimensions of cross-border integration (Durand and Decoville, 2019; van Houtum 2000) should be applied when studying the change in cross-border commuting in the times of rebordering, caused by the pandemic:

• the functional dimension, which is created by the cross-border flows;

• the ideational dimension, which illustrates the level of mutual social trust between borderlands populations;

• the institutional dimension, which is a result of an involvement of various stakeholders into cross-border structures.

Cross-border flows contribute to the cross-border integration, which is seen

However, there are many different cross-border contexts. As a general rule, the greater the economic disparities are, the greater the level of interactions measured by cross-border commuting and also a proportion of residents based on the other side of the border can be observed in a cross-border region (Perkmann 2003; Decoville et al. 2013; Durand and Decoville 2019).

In terms of influencing labour mobility trends, ‘pull factors’, where the attractiveness of the destination market plays a crucial role, are thus generally regarded as more important than ‘push factors’, where unfavourable economic indicators cause an outflow of the workforce. As a result, higher incomes and better jobs in the destination region outweigh any unfavourable economic conditions in the region of origin (Böhm and Opioła 2019). Luxembourg as a European capital of cross-border commuting should be mentioned here as well as the studied Czech-German border region.

Nevertheless, given the fact that cross-border commuting has become reality for only 1% of the European labour force, it is evident that merely economic motivation cannot explain labour mobility flows and trends. The identified low levels of cross-border employment in the EU clearly show that the barriers to cross-border labour mobility have outweighed the pull and push factors of cross-border commuting.

In their eponymous article, van Houtum and van de Velde identified the power of cross-border immobility (2004). Despite the increase in the numbers of cross-border commuters since 2004, they are still generally low. Also, in 2021 it seems that ‘ … the avoidance of uncertainty and wish to border oneself and identify with an existing socio-spatial category are important motivators for non-action’ (Van Houtum and Van der Velde 2004). People are not fully rational in making decisions to migrate or cross-border commute (Van der Velde and van Naerssen, 2011).

Those ‘soft mental obstacles’ and thinking in the categories ‘Wesociety x Theysociety’ (van Houtum 2000) is an (ideational) barrier, which prevents many people living in borderlands from perceiving the ‘other’ part of the cross-border region as their ‘own shared living space’.

However, the cross-border commuting is complicated by unresolved obstacles other than purely ‘mental ones’. While some are place-specific, some can be found in the whole EU (Medeiros et al. 2020). Cross-border commuters face problems caused by the divergence of the social systems (Svensson and Balogh 2018). The legal obstacles stemming from different national administrations require efficient territorial integration approaches (van der Zwet and Ferry 2019; Medeiros and van der Zwet 2020). It is advised (by Medeiros et al. 2020) to mix them with multi-level governance, place-based (Barca 2009) and global spatial planning (Dühr 2018; Beer and Clower 2019; Colomb and Tomaney 2021) policy approaches (Faludi 2018) at the institutional level. Cross-border commuters must also face persisting physical border barriers, such as the lack of common public transport systems and infrastructure (Church and Reid 1996; Dörry and Decoville 2016).

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused the largest re-bordering in the history of European integration as the European borders were closed or at least substantially restricted. These restrictions have revealed that territorialism, based on the national state as a key and only efficient policy actor, still shapes national identities and perceptions of the world, which remains largely Westphalian (Faludi 2018). Medeiros et al. (2020) described this pandemic-related re-bordering with a term 'Covid-fencing', explained as the systematic closing of national borders to the circulation of people. This Covidfencing indicates that territorialism perceptions enjoy an overwhelming acceptance.

The first academic responses to the impact that the pandemic has had on the cross-border cooperation did not focus on cross-border commuters exclusively, but reflected difficulties they experienced in the first pandemic wave of 2020. The most common keywords used to describe the impact the rebordering had on cross-border commuters were uncertainty, information chaos and lack of coordination.

The research on the impact of border closures in Cieszyn/Český Těšín on the Czech-Polish border showed that covidfencing had damaged the perception of this divided town as a good place to live since it introduced an element of uncertainty. Especially Polish cross-border commuters employed in Czechia pointed out that this uncertainty forced them to look for employment (back) in their homeland (Böhm 2021, 2022). In the beginning of 2020, the cross-border commuting was considered to be a ‘normal’ option whereas a year later it became a potential risk. However, the Czech-Polish twin town was just one of the cross-border regions where the border closures complicated the work and its reconciliation with family life of cross-border commuters. Similar problems were reported from the German-Polish (Hennig 2020; Jańczak 2020; Opiłowska 2020), German-Dutch-Belgian (Unfried 2020), German-Danish (Klatt 2020) or German-French border (Pigeron-Piroth et al. 2020). Generally speaking, cross-border commuters were allowed to cross the border to work in a neighbouring country, but the filter function of the border, caused by an advent of unilateralism, made their lives complicated.

As Medeiros et al. (2020) concluded, when summarising the reactions to the first pandemic wave,

This primarily applies to cross-border commuters.

In the discourse and practice of European integration, few topics resonate more than people's mobility (Hadler 2006; Novotný 2021b). At present, mobility within the EU mirrors the emergence of an integrating social space more than it reflects an economic one (i.e. a unified labour market, taking into account the low numbers of cross-border commuters). So far, we have only partial information about cross-border commuting. Survey data on Western European citizens who have resettled to another EU member state testify to multifaceted causes and consequences of geographical mobility. In particular, these data show that the self-identification of those ‘movers’ with the European integration idea is much higher than among the general population (Recchi 2008; Van der Velde and Spierings 2010). There is a lack of information on how the cross-border mobility can raise productivity and innovation and how it can help these commuters to create a cross-border community.

There is data available on the impacts of negative labour market experiences on the life satisfaction of the Eastern Europeans working in the ‘EU15’. The recent literature has revealed a ‘dark side’ of this ‘East–West’ mobility as many mobile Eastern Europeans have had negative experiences in the EU-15 labour market (Janicka and Kaczmarczyk 2016; Haindorfer 2013). We know that many ‘EU13’ migrants would engage in jobs at the low-end niches of the labour markets, which the ‘EU 15’ citizens would no longer accept, and they would accept the (well paid) jobs deeply under their qualifications and social statute (Favell 2008: 711). The empirical findings about Czech, Slovak and Hungarian cross-border commuters working in Austria showed that the negative labour market experiences are not important for commuters’ life satisfaction as such (Haindorfer 2020). The only exception is an ethnicity-based discrimination, which can be a reason for terminating cross-border commuting by a commuter.

Cross-border commuting can be viewed and researched from multiple perspectives. At the moment, neither the professionals, nor the politicians have framed a discourse on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected cross-border commuters, what was the reaction of various public bodies and how the pandemic changed the perception of the borders. This paper will be based on the above described three dimensions of cross-border integration (van Houtum 2000; Durand and Decoville 2019). This paper is intended to address the ever-present shortcomings and barriers that prevent us from fully understanding the problems the cross-border commuters must have faced during the monitored phases of the pandemic. The following three research questions (RQ) are proposed in order to fill/narrow the existing research gap.

The work was organised in two steps: (1) desk research; (2) semi-structured interviews with the heterogenous group of the Czech cross-border commuters employed in adjacent German regions.

In the first desk-research phase, content analysis was conducted (see Krippendorff 2004; Neuendorf 2017) to analyse the first reactions of cross-border scholars and practitioners to the impact the covidfencing had on cross-border commuters. As it was not possible to follow all relevant texts (often published without peer-review in thematic blogs), the selection of sources may not have been exhaustive. Only those papers were used that focused on the impact of the covidfencing on the cross-border commuters employed (or coming from) Germany and Czechia.

In the second phase, semi-structured interviews were organised with Czech cross-border commuters employed in neighbouring German regions. The interviews focused on their motivations to become cross-border commuters, form and intensity of commuting, personal history of cross-border commuting, pros and cons of cross-border commuting and their future career plans. However, the aim was also to understand the impact of the COVID-19 on cross-border commuting as such, changes in the patterns of the cross-border commuting, the biggest covidfencing-related challenges for cross-border commuters, stigmatisation of the cross-border commuters and prejudices against them, discrimination against the commuters in favour to their German colleagues and attitude of official authorities/other actors to those commuters including identification of actors who eventually defended the interests of cross-border commuters.

In general, it was relatively difficult to reach the target group of cross-border commuters. It was even more difficult during the Covid-19 pandemic, which had reduced interregional mobility. The research survey was specifically concentrated on the commuters from the Czech part of the Elbe/Labe Euroregion. A total of 40 intensive interviews with cross-border commuters were held there in April and the first half of May 2021. Each interview lasted 28–45 min and was recorded. The aim was to give respondents enough space to express themselves (Flowerdew and Martin 2005). 16 interviews were conducted with women, the others were men. In two cases, the respondents had a university degree, the others were upper secondary school graduates. Their average age slightly exceeds 35 years (35,4) and their cross-border commuting experience is above six years (6,35). More detailed information on cross-border commuters is in Appendix 1.

With the help of students and other regional contacts (mostly using the snowball technique and also through mayors and entrepreneurs), the authors focused on those who commute to Germany at least twice a week to work within the distance of about 50 km. Given the lack of the data on the target group, also considering the possible decrease in the number of cross-border commuters, qualitative research was chosen, which proved to be a more suitable research technique to obtain relative up-to-date information and attitudes of cross-border workers to the problems addressed in this study. Semi-structured interviews were prepared and an interviewer's handbook was developed with the help of cross-border cooperation experts based mainly, but not exclusively, in the EEL. It was tested on a small sample of respondents and subsequently optimised (Berg 2001).

However, the situation regarding cross-border commuters developed dramatically in the studied period and flexibility was therefore necessary (Silverman 2013). Indeed, questions had to be gradually modified and some also added, which is permissible in qualitatively-oriented research (Elster 1989; Denzin 2001). Some respondents also presented additional photographic material, which mainly documented a very problematic situation they were facing at the borders. Interviews were processed anonymously. In some cases, we re-approached our respondents to learn the newest developments/challenges they were facing.

Interviews were conducted by telephone and subsequently re-written (with the help of students who had been trained for this purpose) and coded. All interviews were transcribed in full in Czech language. Key words and core passages were identified to facilitate interpreting the data. According to the keywords, key core passages were selected, which were dealt with as a priority during the interpretation (thematic analysis). Respondents’ statements are presented herein with an anonymised name and place of residence.

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and in particular that of the related border-crossing restrictions, was substantial for the interviewed commuters. Covid-19 has transformed not only the function, but also the perception of the border. Commuters, who previously crossed borders without any problems, faced unexpected complications. Even German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier pointed out during his visit to the Czech Republic in August 2021 (ČT 24 2021) that these restrictions had a major impact on their professional and personal lives.

The already difficult situation of commuters was further exacerbated by the lack of coordination between the two countries. This not only strengthened their distrust (articulated especially against the Czech authorities, who ostracised them and greatly reduced traffic at the border), but also reinforced their perception of the border as a physical barrier. In particular, the initial closure of borders by the Czech side in March 2020, but also the closures of February 2021 introduced by the German side, were basically interpreted as a shock. Cross-border commuters criticised the unpredictability of the situation, the rapidness and speed of the announcement of new restrictions and rules, but also a massive administrative burden associated with the obligation to fill in various forms. All this was accompanied by chaos, contradicting information and traffic jams and queues at border crossings. Thus, the cross-border commuters have fallen victim to the preference of national solutions over bilateral/multilateral procedures.

In March 2020, when the Czech Republic unilaterally closed the entire 815 km of the Czech-German border, some employers asked their Czech employees to temporarily move to Germany until the re-opening of the border. The motivation of the individual actors varied: for example, the Saxon and Bavarian governments, being well aware of the importance of cross-border commuters employed in the critical infrastructure, especially in the health sector, provided employers with a financial subsidy for the accommodation of cross-border commuters. However, the willingness of commuters to leave their homes was low as they did not know how long it could take, so they did not want to leave their families and home commitments.

Some cross-border commuters decided to quit their jobs in Germany or were laid off, but this was always the case of those working outside the critical infrastructure. Most often it was the commuters employed by labour agencies who lost their jobs. However, interviews suggest that in most cases this situation has been resolved and that it has not ended in termination of employment, but in some sort of compromise. In general, the period of severe restrictions was really difficult for all cross-border commuters. It also showed their actual irreplaceability in critical infrastructure sectors. In the end, interviews showed that the common sense and willingness on both sides to reach a meaningful agreement have prevailed.

While some of the commuters were unable to comment on the sense of open borders and free movement in the EU, some expressed serious doubts about the very meaning of European integration. It should be remembered that cross-border commuters were forced to have the confirmation of employment, negative tests or had to regularly fill in an on-line arrival form to be able to enter Germany. Moreover, they experienced various conflict situations. It is also worth mentioning that controls as intensive as those introduced at the Czech-German border in March 2020 have not been in place since 1989.

Reactions to the closed borders varied. However, in principle, two different types of reactions could be observed. The first is the growing scepticism towards the European Union and the concept of open borders as an essential building block of European integration. There was quite a lot of criticism among the commuters vis-à-vis the European Union, but also vis-à-vis the Czech institutions, which – in their opinions – prevented them from profiting from the free movement.

Moreover, the border restrictions also made some of the commuters rethink their current status of a cross-border commuter. It was the reality of open borders that made many of them decide to work in the adjacent German part of the borderlands and profit from the EU's common market. For many of them, it was a way to stay at home (often in rural areas of the borderlands) and earn above-average earnings abroad, albeit often – especially in lower-paid professions – as precarious workers.

From the point of view of the (non)functioning of the institutions, various assessments of both national and regional institutions, as well as the institutions of a neighbouring country, appear in the statements of the commuters. Their criticism focuses on institutions on the Czech side.

In general, there is considerable criticism of the hasty announcement of restrictions and new rules. The cross-border commuters felt neglected and overlooked. They mention some Czech politicians, such as Minister of the Interior Jan Hamáček, as well as the presidents of the regions in the borderland, who have often denounced commuters in the media and blamed them for introducing Covid-19 into the country.

The criticisms also concerned the practical implications of the measures taken. Despite these measures being officially adopted, the cross-border commuters experienced situations where the police at the border did not have up-to-date information the next day, and the measures often contradicted each other and were not coordinated with the German side. The experience of false tests was also mentioned. According to the commuters, the problems during the first pandemic wave of spring 2020 were mainly in the low availability of tests, queues at the border and opening hours of some services, which did not correspond to their working week. As far as the German side and institutions are concerned, positive assessments prevail. The commuters appreciate that both federal and regional institutions, including politicians, have advocated the cross-border commuters’ right to commute and applied reasonable rules to them. On the other hand, the cross-border institutions, such as Euroregions, including the EEL, were not mentioned by the commuters at all. The commuters themselves know how important they are in the labour market where they also work in critical infrastructure (e.g. in the field of health and transport). Roughly one in four respondents received ‘Kurzarbeit’ subsidy, with the majority staying at home for a few weeks while receiving 60 percent of the income, some of them also received support from their employer in addition to the ‘Kurzarbeit subsidy’. The Kurzarbeit subsidy was appreciated by Czech commuters, because after deducting the costs of transport and food, their income did not drop dramatically or at all.

Even though the research was methodologically limited to interviews, it yielded some interesting outcomes and indicated possible future research directions and desirable policy steps. The studied EEL experienced a dramatic decrease in all types of human movement in the period under consideration, especially in the cross-border flows. The cross-border commuters had to face various types of barriers and suffered from the non-coordination between Czechia and Germany and the conflicting information. Yet, there never was a situation of a ‘hermetic’ border closure as some of the commuters are indispensable for the functioning of Saxon (German) critical infrastructure. Still, it is obvious that the way cross-border commuters perceive the border has changed and that the image of the border as a barrier has been strengthened. From the theoretical point of view, it has undergone significant changes in both functional and ideal dimension of cross-border cooperation.

However, also the ‘more expendable’ sectors of (Saxon) economy rely on the Czech workforce. The employers in Saxony tried to accommodate the needs of their Czech employees, who had to ask for a modification of working hours due to the compulsory testing or the queues at the border crossings. Within the research of the institutional dimension of cross-border integration, the relevant German institutions (employees, labour offices) are perceived mostly positively. By contrast, Czech institutions (especially governments, but also regional governments) have failed in their eyes. The EEL or any other institution promoting cross-border cooperation were not even mentioned.

In some cases, the Czech commuters were allowed to stay at home and benefited from the ‘Kurzarbeit’ subsistence allowance – as did their German colleagues working for the same employers. Once the measures at the border crossings were loosened, the cross-border commuting was restored. There is no precise verified information on a possible decrease of cross-border commuting in the Czech-German borderland, but the interviewed commuters do not immediately plan to change their labour market status. It can thus be concluded that cross-border commuting has survived the first pandemic waves and the Saxon offer of well-paid jobs (in comparison to the Czech salary conditions) will continue to attract the Czech workforce. As the job losses were experienced by low-qualified staff working for the labour agencies, it is quite likely that the Czechs working in Germany will attempt to avoid this type of employment contract.

Having said that, it must be pointed out that the rebordering changed the cross-border commuting. As of 2021, a Czech cross-border commuter will cross the border and go to their workplace in Germany with a different feeling they had in 2019. They might feel the bitterness and uncertainty about what the future has in store for them. They might be afraid to become an ‘unwanted’ alien, who is bringing a disease from ‘Theysociety’ into ‘Wesociety’. They could also fear the reactions of the own neighbours in their neighbourhood in Czechia, who could have the same concerns – that they import the virus from Germany. It is evident that commuters are the ones to cross the borders most often. Their importance for cross-border integration is thus crucial. They will retain this role even after the first waves of the pandemic, but major efforts will have to be made to end their scepticism and distrust towards cross-border crisis management.

The pandemic-related rebordering has revealed that the national states constitute a category which is very much present in the current EU, as evident from the very example of Czech cross-border commuters working in Germany. They were left alone in these times of rebordering and became victims of non-coordination between Czechia and Germany. Their existing contractual obligations towards their German employers were ignored. The Czech police and public authorities have not made the lives of the commuters any easier. They were offended by an anti-commuting rhetoric, as presented by the Czech politicians at both national (Interior Minister Hamáček) and regional (president of Karlovy Vary Region) levels and partly reflected in the media, which was experienced with bitterness among cross-border commuters. They doubted the very sense of the European integration process as the pandemic-related rebordering showed that cross-border commuters were perceived as ‘trouble-makers’ by (not only Czech) politicians. The Czech official authorities acted and communicated in a way that was not in line with the principles of European solidarity. The institutions promoting cross-border cooperation, including EEL, failed to provide any help.

The only support to Czech cross-border commuters, albeit pragmatically motivated, came from their German employers, who cannot do without those employees and tried to apply a flexible approach and common sense. The commuters tried to compensate for the lack of support from the part of official authorities by self-organisation, becoming more active on the social network groups and even founding their own union – Association of Cross-border Commuters.

The pandemic has revealed the need for a functional system of the cross-border management in the period of crisis to protect cross-border commuters and provide them with better security. Such functional coordination was not the case during the first pandemic waves as both German President Steinmaier and Czech Prime Minister Babiš agreed during their Prague meeting in August 2021. It is desirable that such a system should involve all vertical levels of public administration and be well managed to respect the single market principles as well as rights of the EU citizens. The pandemic has also revealed that cross-border commuters are unaware of the division of competences between the regional authorities, Member States and the European Union, which underlines the need for a more efficient communication.

Cross-border commuters deserve further attention from cross-border cooperation stakeholders and scholars as they profit from the advantages of European integration while having to face the consequences of non-Europe, which results from the ‘border-blind’ decisions issued by the national states. It would be appropriate to focus on the impact of the pandemic on cross-border commuting in a comparative perspective in all relevant European cross-border contexts.

The authors wish to thank both anonymous reviewers, who substantially helped to re-direct and improve the final version of this article.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Hynek Böhm is a associate professor of regional and social development at Technical University in Liberec, Czech Republic, and University of Opole, Poland. His research interests include border studies and political geography

Lukáš Novotný is a associate professor of political science at Jan-Evangelista-Purkyne University in Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic. His research interests include border studies and political sociology.