In times of crises, the notion of European solidarity is severely put into question by the inability of the EU’s member states to convene a fair burden sharing, and by the success of populist parties that pressure governments to put national agendas first. However, both the Great Recession and the immigration of refugees has mobilized a great number of solidarity initiatives throughout Europe. Most of these initiatives operate on the local and national level, and are engaged in various forms of activism that range between the provision of immediate help and political advocacy. Their discourse and activism is strongly committed to the idea of local and transnational solidarity.

This panel seeks to shed light on this less researched field of analysis. It aims to answer three overarching questions. First, on which kind of activities and practices, ideas and beliefs is this form of civic solidarity based on? Second, what are the contextual factors that matter in promoting or inhibiting transnational solidarity at the individual and organizational level; i.e., what is the effect of legal, political, administrative or economic contexts in the various countries? And finally, how sustainable is this form of civic solidarity across time; i.e., can we identify issues or actors that are able to subsist? The panel recruits a number of papers addressing these issues from a conceptual and empirical perspective. Contributions are based on ongoing research projects that have assembled a unique set of systematic data on civic solidarity in various European countries.