In the context of the so-called refugee crisis, political disputes about solidarity become a central issue with member states applying competing concepts. At the same time, European cities use transnational networks to implement a new form of solidarity among municipalities via city diplomacy (Acuto, Morissette, & Tsouros, 2017). Analyzing the deadlock between member states and the emerging activities of cities, we scrutinize the limits of existing approaches to political solidarity (e.g., Agustín & Jørgensen, 2019; Knodt, Tews, & Piefer, 2014; Sangiovanni, 2013) to explain this phenomenon. Based on expert interviews and document analysis from a study on transnational municipal networks, we identify an emerging concept of solidarity that challenges the nation states as core providers of solidarity from within: transmunicipal solidarity focuses on joint action of local governments to scale out and scale up.

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This contribution will show how institutions in Spain and Germany facilitated intra‐European labour mobility as a solution to a mismatch in the labour market. To this end, we have chosen the recruitment of Spanish job candidates for German employers as an example. Employing Bourdieu's field‐theoretical framework as well as expert interviews, we highlight the role of institutional agents encouraging labour migration. We analysed 30 expert interviews to gain insights from institutional agents that facilitate labour migration in the Spanish and the German labour market. Our findings show how these agents use their resources to legitimize policies and create sustainable structures steering labour migration and integration.

Making use of qualitative data from case studies on two of the most important city networks in the field of migration and diversity in Germany, this contribution aims to deepen the understanding of city networks and their modes of operation. Based on a literature review covering the characteristics of city networks we propose an analytical framework that distinguishes between the dimensions of internal and external representation. This framework enables the analysis of the two cases: Deutscher Städtetag (Association of German Cities) and Kommunaler Qualitätszirkel zur Integrationspolitik (Municipal Quality Circle on Integration Policy). While the former is an umbrella organisation of larger cities, the latter can be described as an informal network of likeminded municipalities in the field of migration and diversity. In order to shed light on the interplay of structure, strategies and issues addressed by these networks (in the field of migration), we draw on the analysis of various documents as well as participant observation and face-to-face interviews. Concluding, we critically discuss the conventional characteristics of city networks and develop assumptions on how a network's structure influences its outreach strategies.

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