peer reviewed ; National borders inside the European Union are open contact zones of transnational everyday lives. The Schengen Agreement ensures the free movement of EU citizens leading to new forms of international migration and illustrating the European integration process on the local level. Therefore, migrants move to the neighbouring country to live or work there. Cross-border residential property and labour markets develop meaning the transnationalisation of everyday lives between neighbouring countries. With the case study region of the municipality of Perl in the German federal state of Saarland and the joined municipality Amt Löcknitz-Penkun in the German federal state of Mecklenburg- Western Pomerania the following article deals with these cross-border everyday lives. On the one side of the national state borders there is a booming region (Luxembourg or Szczecin) and on the other side there is a structural weak rural German region. This substantially influences these processes. Both case study regions show dealings with these cross-border phenomena and spatial implications deriving from this.