Making sense of trajectories of participation in European city networks on migration: insights from the cases of Turin (Italy) and Saint-Etienne (France)

The article addresses the topic of cities’ trajectories of participation in Transnational City Networks on migration-related issues to identify factors and mechanisms of mobilisation. We present the results of a qualitative study on Turin (Italy) and Saint-Etienne (France). Both cities started to mobilise internationally in the 1990s on the initiative of entrepreneurial mayors, yet throughout the 2000s took opposite paths: in Turin, intense participation until 2014 was followed by partial dis-involvement and renewed activism since 2018; Saint-Etienne started to distance itself in 2008 and has not actively participated since then. We show how in the case of Turin, internationalisation has been driven by networks’ professionals engaging their personal relations in boundary-spanning work, establishing connections between public and non-public actors and between the local and international spheres. Such dynamics are absent in the case of Saint-Etienne, where mobilisation on migration has always been mayors-centred.