Canton of Valserhône

Valserhône (French pronunciation: [valsəʁon] ; Arpitan: Vâlcerôno) is a commune in the Ain department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in Eastern France. It is the result of the merger, on 1 January 2019, of the communes of Bellegarde-sur-Valserine, Châtillon-en-Michaille and Lancrans. In 2018, the three communes had a combined population of 16,431, with Bellegarde-sur-Valserine as the major population centre. This makes Valserhône the third-most populated commune of Ain, after Bourg-en-Bresse and Oyonnax.

Bellegarde-sur-Valserine (French pronunciation: [bɛlɡaʁd syʁ valsəʁin], literally Bellegarde on Valserine; Arpitan: Bèlagouârda) is a former commune in the Ain department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in Eastern France. On 1 January 2019, it was merged into the new commune of Valserhône.

The river Valserine (French pronunciation: [valsəʁin]) is a tributary of the Rhône that flows for 47.6 kilometres (29.6 mi) from the Col de la Faucille in the Jura Mountains to its confluence with the Rhône at Bellegarde-sur-Valserine. The Valserine Valley has great charm; it includes the Pont des Pierres that spans the river between Montanges and Mulaz (in the commune of Confort), as well as the Pertes de la Valserine just north of Bellegarde-sur-Valserine, a canyon in which during the dry season the Valserine runs underground. As the river flows through the village of Mijoux, it marks the border between Ain (a department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region) and Jura (in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté).

Bellegarde station (French: Gare de Bellegarde) is a railway station served by TGV, TER Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Léman Express located in Bellegarde-sur-Valserine, in the département of Ain, France. The first station building opened in 1858 to allow a stop on the line between Seyssel and Geneva. The wooden building was destroyed by fire and requiring the construction of a new building in 1907. Over the years, other lines reached to the station, causing passenger numbers to grow. The first TGV service was in 1981 between Paris Gare de Lyon and Geneva. From a simple railway station, the site underwent a major restructuring in 2010 to become an interchange. This was triggered by the decision to renovate the Ligne du Haut-Bugey.

The Perte du Rhône (Loss of the Rhône) is a sixty-metre-deep geologic fault just upstream of Bellegarde-sur-Valserine in France, into which the Rhône River used to disappear during the dry season. It marked the border between Ain and Haute-Savoie. In 1948, the Génissiat Dam, designed by French architects Albert Laprade and Léon Bazin, was built to the south of Bellegarde. With the construction of the dam, the Perte du Rhône was transformed into a reservoir twenty three kilometres long, from Génissiat to the Swiss border. A similar feature called Pertes de la Valserine still exists in the same area.In 1854, Eugène Renevier, Professor of Geology and Paleontology at the University of Lausanne, wrote Fossiles du terrain aptien de la Perte-du-Rhône with François Jules Pictet de la Rive.

Lancrans (French pronunciation: [lɑ̃kʁɑ̃]; Arpitan: Lancrens) is a former commune in the Ain department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in Eastern France. On 1 January 2019, it was merged into the new commune of Valserhône. In 1858, Vanchy (renamed Coupy in 1907, merged in 1966 into Bellegarde-sur-Valserine) and Confort separated from Lancrans to form new communes.

Confort (French pronunciation: [kɔ̃'fɔʁ]) is a commune in the Ain department in eastern France.

Saint-Germain-sur-Rhône (French pronunciation: [sɛ̃ ʒɛʁmɛ̃ syʁ ʁon], literally Saint-Germain on Rhône; Arpitan: San-Zharmin) is a commune in the Haute-Savoie department and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of eastern France.

Éloise (French pronunciation: [elwaz]; Arpitan: Élouéze) is a commune in the Haute-Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France.

Villes is a commune in the Ain department in eastern France.

Châtillon-en-Michaille (French pronunciation: [ʃatijɔ̃ ɑ̃ miʃaj]; Arpitan: Châtelyon) is a former commune in the Ain department in eastern France. On 1 January 2019, it was merged into the new commune of Valserhône.

Arpitania (Arpitan and Italian: Arpitania, French: Arpitanie) is a controversial term which denotes the purported ethnic or cultural unity of the Western Alps, represented by speakers of Franco-Provençal (termed Arpitan). "Arpitania" roughly corresponds to the historical County of Savoy and its successor state the Duchy of Savoy: France (Ain, Rhône, Savoie, Haute-Savoie, a big part of the Isère department, southern Franche-Comté). The northwestern salient (roughly a strip between Mâcon and Roanne) is seen linguistically transitional between Arpitan, Occitan, and other Oïl languages. Italy (Aosta Valley, parts of Piedmont, Faeto and Celle di San Vito in the Province of Foggia, in Apulia) Switzerland (Romandy, excluding the northern and western parts of Jura)The terms Arpitan and Arpitania (Arpitanie) are neologisms coined in the 1970s by Joseph Henriet (born 1945), a Communist school teacher who was influenced by the Basque activist Federico Krutwig. In his Garaldea (published 1978), Krutwig names the Basques "Garalditans", a purported Neolithic race which he claimed existed thousands of years ago. Looking for racial or linguistic remnants of the "Garalditans", he moved to the Aosta Valley in 1970, constructing Basque etymologies for local placenames. In Aosta, Krutwig befriended the young Maoist activist Joseph Henriet. Influenced by Krutwig, Henriet declared the local patois the descendant of the Neolithic "Garalditan language". He later replaced the term garalditan with harpitan, a conflation of the patois words arpa "alp", arpian "one who works on an alp", and the Basque etymology Basque harri-pe "under the rocks" proposed by Krutwig. Around 1980, Harriet dropped the Basque-inspired initial h-, now proposing an "Arpitan confederation" (Confédération arpitane) uniting Savoy and the Valais (but not including the patois-speaking Vaud). With the failure of his Arpitan political movement, he retired to private life. The term arpitan since the 1990s has found usage beyond the immediate sphere of Henriet's activities, especially driven by online use. Pichard (2009) suggests its newfound success was due to the happy rhyme with Occitan and the unwieldiness of the alternative francoprovençal. The alternative term patois, while viewed with affection in Switzerland, has a condescending or "humiliating" connotation in France. An Aliance Culturèla Arpitana was founded in 2004.