ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a critical analysis of traditional hypotheses concerning frontier region development and develops a new hypothesis about the study of the regions in the context of the international division of labour. It emphasizes how recent industrial development seems to have occurred in spite of the local context. Faced with processes of technological innovation, the local environment of frontier regions seems to offer new possibilities in the Europe of the 1980s. Economic and political elements, in their spatial and historical dimensions, explain the frontier phenomena much better than mere geographic location. The duality of the labour market becomes the thermometer of the catalytic role of the frontier– though often for the region on only one side– in the process of spatial diffusion of activities. The problem of frontier regions concerns a considerable number of areas in Europe. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the implications of the current phase of industrial and technological restructuring for frontier region development.
