(Im)moral Mobilities in a Swiss Borderland

Based on an ethnographic case study in a Swiss valley on the border with France, this paper sheds light on the emergence of a regime of (im)moral mobilities. It investigates how and why the presence of a specific border in a peripheralized region - in this case a national border separating spheres of income inequality - informs and results in dynamics of morally contested mobilities. The analysis shows how some cross-border mobilities, while being legal (such as living in Switzerland and shopping in France or living in France and working in Switzerland), are negotiated by borderlanders, who perceive them as damaging to the economic and social well-being of the valley. It focuses on everyday practices and discourses to illuminate the informal and mundane (re)production of borders and boundaries. The deployment of the regime of (im)moral mobilities - and all the discourses and practices it comprises - produces immoralized individuals who are stigmatized, as well as moralized persons who feel they belong to a collective.