NAFTA and Cross-Border Relations in Niagara, Detroit, and Vancouver

Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly (1)

1 PACTE - Pacte, Laboratoire de sciences sociales

First, does free trade, and particularly economic
integration, lead to a process of functional interdependency and to cross-border linkages in
North America? Second, do politics and institutions mediate this process? Specifically, how
does the intergovernmental network linking local, regional, provincial/state, and federal institutions
mediate this process and impact local level initiatives? To investigate these questions, this work focuses on cross-border relations in three metropolitan
border areas: the Canadian-American border regions of Niagara-Niagara, Windsor-
Detroit, and Vancouver-Seattle. This study takes a Canadian perspective and thus primarily
focuses on Canada, Ontario, and British Columbia, and on Niagara, Windsor, and Vancouver
and their border regions. The findings presented in this paper suggest that economic integration
may lead to cross-border institution building when borderland communities also share the same
value system.

Mots clés: cross-border regions; NAFTA; North America; Canadian American border; cross-border relations

Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly. NAFTA and Cross-Border Relations in Niagara, Detroit, and Vancouver. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 2006, 21 (2), pp.1-20. ⟨halshs-00379895⟩