The cross-border flow is not the same everywhere. In the southern Palatinate (Regio Pamina), about 16,000 French citizens commute to factories in Rastatt or Wörth. The high real-estate prices in Strasbourg are the reason why a lot of French citizens move to the German border region. And in Regio Trirhena, the “Euroregion” surrounding the triangle of Freiburg, Mulhouse, and Basel, the cross-border commuters are mostly French citizens who work in Germany or Switzerland. About 30,000 people commute from Alsace to Baden; 800 alone come to the town of Breisach every day. Additionally, 25,000 Germans commute to Switzerland for work. About one-third of the German cross-border commuters who live in France and work in Germany do so to save money. The number had increased steadily after the Euro was introduced, but it leveled off about a year ago. Today, roughly 15,000 German nationals live in Alsace; 11,000 people with French passports live in Baden. Almost fifty percent of the German cross-border commuters from Alsace work in manufacturing in Germany. Because about 68,000 commuters from Alsace work in northwestern Switzerland, southern Palatinate, or Baden, the unemployment rate in Alsace is lower than in other parts of France. “Except for cheese, wine, and fish, we buy all our groceries in Germany,” says Hervé Piernot. On weekends, Germans living in France and Frenchmen stand in line at discount supermarkets in Germany.
The barracks next to the housing development in Volgelsheim are being renovated. Piernot says that there is great interest in the apartments. “A lot have already been sold.” But coexistence between incoming Germans and local French citizens doesn’t always work as well as it does in his housing development. He explains, “Some people don’t want to assimilate. They send their children to kindergarten in Breisach and don’t even take advantage of the opportunity to have their children learn both languages in the French kindergarten here.” In Frankfurt, Stuttgart, or Berlin, on the other hand, parents spend a lot of money to send their children to multilingual kindergartens. According to a 1997 poll – whose results are still basically valid – only fourteen percent of Germans who relocated to Alsace speak fluent French. The higher the education level, the better the linguistic abilities, and the fewer the conflicts with local residents. Leftist German intellectuals who buy farmhouses in Alsace and, as the Alsatians often tease, wear berets to bed, are the minority here. “When I came to Breisach from Normandy, I was surprised to discover how pronounced the language barrier still is,” said Emilie Dumaine, who advises cross-border commuters at Infobest. Bilingual school instruction has been compulsory in Alsace since 1990, but it only became compulsory along the so-called “Rheinschiene” [“Rhine Axis”] in Baden-Württemberg’s border region in 2003. The French government has done more for bilingualism than the German federal government or, for a long time, the state government of Baden-Württemberg. The German and French labor markets still aren’t sufficiently permeable. The “Eures-T” cross-border network has tasked itself with changing this and making life easier for cross-border commuters. But when a German who is living in France becomes unemployed, there are still numerous bureaucratic hurdles with both employment offices. “There are a lot of Germans who view their house in France as nothing but a place to sleep and who do everything else in Germany. Of course, that doesn’t go down too well with the Alsatians,” says Dumaine.
Piernot also thinks that some Germans reject the French lifestyle too vehemently. “In France we sometimes mow the lawn at five minutes after 6 pm; we are a little more tolerant that way. Many Germans can’t understand this and get annoyed straight away.” He says that anyone who wants to understand the German mentality should drive through the housing development in Algolsheim. That’s the one with the orderly German single-family homes. Piernot uses his right hand to draw the equally-sized housing lots in the air, marking each picket fence separating the properties with a pointed “tack!” as he draws them.
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