The influence of geographical marginalities and cultural resurgences on the economic development of island border territories

Despite their obvious differences, comparisons of Jersey and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon are pertinent and informative due to their respective institutional statuses and locations. Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, situated close to the Canadian island of Newfoundland, is fully
included within the French Republic but does not belong to the European Union. It thereby has room for manoeuvre beyond the scope of standard regions within the national context. Jersey, a dependency of the British Crown, lies 24 kilometres off the
Cotentin Peninsula, part of the French region of Basse-Normandie. Not included within the United Kingdom and, by extension, out of the European Union, it has been able to develop a set of skilled activities, mainly in the financial sector.
At their different levels and temporalities, these island-border territories are institutional and geographical margins that have tended to develop dematerialised activities within extended spatial systems. In addition to addressing this aspect, the article also stresses
a second aspect of the islands’ relational pattern that has – in recent years, at least – led them to remember and revive former (and largely forgotten) cultural links with their continental vicinities. The phenomenon of local resurgence is prevalent in Jersey, where
it operates in something of a counterbalance to global drifts in the finance industry and in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, with particular regard to the reactivation of its historical links to Acadia.