“All the World's a Stage?” A Role Theory Analysis of City Diplomacy in Global Migration Governance

Abstract

In 2018, cities from Africa, Europe, North, and South America officially submitted input to the state-led negotiations of the Global Compact for Migration. In the same year, the Mayors Mechanism was established within the Global Forum on Migration and Development, and in 2019, cities made pledges to localize the Global Compact on Refugees. At first sight, this engagement seems surprising, given that migration and displacement are mostly areas of national decision making. How, then, did it become possible for cities to claim a role in global migration governance? And how do cities attempt to play this role? While cities as integration actors have received growing academic attention, it is time to focus on city agency in global migration governance. To explore this phenomenon, this article introduces role theory to research on city diplomacy in migration studies. The analysis shows that the combination of the glocalized representation of migration challenges (linking the local and global levels), the glocal role claimed by cities, and the passive role attributed to nation-states can empower cities to demand an active role in global migration governance. Cities draw on this role to promote three forms of city diplomacy as adequate and feasible actions on the global stage: advocating for rights-based migration policies; striving to gain access to international funding and cooperation partners; and demanding a seat at intergovernmental negotiation tables. In closing, the article reflects on the risks and constraints of city diplomacy in global migration governance and shows directions for future research.

Keywords

city diplomacy migration governance glocalization

Introduction

For some time now, representatives from local governments have been coming together in networks and initiatives to find and share solutions on the integration of migrants and refugees at the national, regional, and global levels (e.g., Oomen 2020, 920; Lacroix 2021, 10). However, recently, a new development can be observed; some local governments no longer content themselves with working on migrant and refugee integration (Thouez 2020, 655). Referring to the need for coherent and sustainable multi-level governance, these cities increasingly engage in migration policy. In 2018, for instance, cities from the Global North and Global South officially submitted input to the state-led negotiations of the Global Compact for Migration (GCM; Thouez 2020, 659); in the same year, the Mayors Mechanism was established within the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), and at the first intergovernmental Global Refugee Forum in 2019, cities pledged to implement the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) (Thouez 2020; UNHCR 2019a). At first sight, this engagement may seem surprising, given that migration and asylum are typically areas of policy-making shaped by national competencies (IOM 2016, 81; Stürner 2020, 10). How, then, did it become possible for cities to claim a role in global migration governance? Moreover, how do cities attempt to play this role in this traditionally intergovernmental policy field?¹

Before tackling these questions, let us take a step back to reflect on the relevance of cities’ claims for a role in global migration governance, for migration researchers and policymakers. As cities, understood as local governments (Acuto and Rayner 2016, 1150), have no official legal status — or differently put “legal personality” — in intergovernmental negotiations pertaining to international law on migration and displacement (Blank 2006, 891, 894), why focus on them at all? The answer lies in a governance paradox that becomes increasingly visible through the advocacy of international organizations, city networks, and cities: on the one hand, cities have become frontline actors in dealing with migration and displacement in the context of worldwide urbanization and are directly impacted by international migration movements and policies (IOM 2015). On the other hand, cities have few, if any, options for co-shaping intergovernmental debates and agreements to ensure that global policy-making reflects and addresses local realities through vertically coherent policies (Stürner-Siovitz 2022). To address this paradox, this article argues, a number of cities are increasingly developing a “glocal” role in global migration governance, on which they draw to promote different forms of city diplomacy in global migration policy-making.²

The first part of this article combines international relations (IR) and urban studies research on city diplomacy with findings from migration studies’ “local turn.” As the literature review reveals, there are a growing number of studies dedicated to cities’ horizontal and, to a lesser extent, vertical outreach to find solutions for the integration of migrants and refugees. However, cities’ and city networks’ strategies to engage in global migration governance beyond integration have been insufficiently addressed. To explore different forms of city diplomacy action in migration policy — a traditional domain of national sovereignty — we must, first, consider what factors may enable cities to claim a role in this governance field, despite the absence of official legal actor status. The article's second part makes a specific theoretical contribution in this regard, introducing role theory, which has mostly been applied at the state level (Harnisch 2017, 9–10), to migration studies and, more specifically, to the research of transnational city agency in global migration governance. Building on a role theory framework tailored to explore city diplomacy, part three sets out an interdisciplinary research design, which, in the analysis presented in part four, shows how the combination of three factors can enable local authorities to take on a glocal role in global migration governance. First among these factors is the transformation of global migration challenges into urban issues, combined with, secondly, the recognition of cities as frontline responders to migration and displacement that can provide local solutions to global challenges. Thirdly, deadlocked and slow-moving intergovernmental negotiations can strengthen cities’ normative position, as cities “alter-cast” states into passive roles, thereby justifying the need for global city diplomacy. As role theory considers roles played by collective actors, such as cities or states, as roadmaps that provide these actors with feasible and appropriate courses of action (Aggestam 2006, 20–21, 24–25; Elgström and Smith 2006, 6), the fifth part of this article explores whether/how cities draw on their glocal role to promote three forms of city diplomacy action:

Cities advocate for rights-based migration governance, holding United Nations (UN) organizations and their member-states accountable to international norms and values.

Cities demand access to international funding and cooperation partners to implement local strategies on urban migration and displacement.

Cities highlight their expertise as implementers and policy innovators and push for a seat at intergovernmental negotiation tables.

In closing, this article reflects on the risks and constraints of city engagement at the global stage and identifies directions for future research on city diplomacy in global migration governance.

Networking is Everything — The Rise of City Diplomacy

While the study of cities has long played a minor role in the academic field of international relations (IR), the last two decades have seen growing interest in city diplomacy among IR and urban scholars (e.g., Aldecoa and Keating 1999; van der Pluijm 2007; Alger 2011; Barber 2014; Curtis 2014, 2016; Ljungkvist 2014, 2016; Acuto and Rayner 2016; Oosterlynck et al. 2019; Kosovac et al. 2020; Pejic 2020; Kihlgren Grandi 2020; Acuto and Leffel 2021; Pejic and Acuto 2022). City diplomacy can be defined as “the institutions and processes by which cities, or local governments in general, engage in relations with actors on an international political stage with the aim of representing themselves and their interests” (van der Pluijm 2007, 6). Although the number of studies on city diplomacy in the policy fields of climate change, health, peace, sustainability, and security is increasing (e.g., van der Pluijm 2007; Acuto 2013; Curtis 2014; Ljungkvist 2016; Acuto, Morissette and Tsouros 2017; Leffel 2022), the great majority of IR and urban studies scholars have stayed surprisingly clear of city agency and action in global migration governance, with some important exceptions (e.g., Kihlgren Grandi 2020; Kosovac and Pejic 2021).

Migration scholars, in turn, have been addressing city engagement at national and regional levels but rarely focus on the global level (e.g., Hepburn and Zapata-Barrero 2014; Dekker et al. 2015; Filomeno 2017; Campomori and Caponio 2017; Oomen 2020; Caponio 2019; Bazurli, Caponio and de Graauw 2022). This article, therefore, aims to contribute to an emerging dialogue between migration studies, IR, and urban studies to explore city diplomacy in global migration governance. As it is evident that cities around the world do not represent a homogenous position or united front when it comes to asylum, migration, and integration, this article's research questions and findings are specific to cities engaging actively on the global level.³

What can migration studies bring to the table for building an analysis of cities as actors in global migration governance? Inspired by increasing municipal and civil society commitment to the integration of migrants and refugees, a “local turn” emerged in migration studies in the late 2000s, exploring the role of local authorities on the ground, as well as in national, federal, and EU multi-level systems (e.g., Caponio and Borkert 2010; Scholten and Penninx 2016; Zapata-Barrero, Caponio and Scholten 2017; Campomori and Caponio 2017; Filomeno 2017). Moreover, academic attention to municipal engagement in migrant and refugee integration has led to a growing number of studies on municipal exchange and city networks (e.g., Oomen 2020; Caponio 2019; Heimann et al. 2019; Lacroix 2021). Given that city networks are critical actors in city diplomacy (Acuto, Morissette and Tsouros 2017, 16), scholars should pay special attention to the bottom-up agency of these “organizations that gather together, on a voluntary basis, local authorities in order to pursue some kind of perceived collective interest or purpose” (Caponio 2019, 2). So far, research has explored national and transnational city networks focusing, inter alia, on integration, intercultural dialogue, and diversity, with studies addressing city network inception, interaction within networks, cities’ (dis)engagement, and network strategies to advocate and lobby for integration (funding) at national and supranational levels (e.g., Penninx 2013; Scholten and Penninx 2016; Oomen, Baumgärtel and Durmus 2018; Caponio 2019; Heimann et al. 2019; Oomen 2020; Fourot, Healy and Flamant 2021; Lacroix 2021).

As the examples in this article's introductory paragraph demonstrate, some cities and city networks are, however, increasingly developing global-level city diplomacy on topics of migration policy beyond questions of integration; this trend remains under-researched in migration studies. Pioneer research comes mostly from the policy field itself (Thouez 2020, 2022; Van Haasen 2020), as well as from IR, urban, and legal studies (Durmuş 2021; Kihlgren Grandi 2020; Kosovac and Pejic 2021). To face this two-fold research gap on city engagement in the global governance of migration, migration studies’ “local turn” must (1) overcome a predominant focus on integration governance, to the detriment of migration governance and (2) expand governance analyses from the local, national, and regional levels toward the global level.⁴

In many domains of international migration (e.g., labor migration, study migration, family reunification, forced migration (IOM 2022)), legal mandates are frequently concentrated at the national level, despite the fact that policy-making has direct impacts on local authorities (IOM 2016, 81). How is it, then, that international organizations increasingly recognize cities’ local expertise and that some even support cities’ claims for global-level agency not only in the governance of integration but also regarding migration?

Who is Who in International Relations? – A Role Theory Framework for City Diplomacy

In the twenty-first century, global cities are no longer only pillars in the infrastructure of a globalized economy (Sassen 1991) but have also become strategic global actors in international politics (Ljungkvist 2016, 7). Predominantly large cities increasingly conduct their own foreign affairs and security policies on behalf of their communities to address global challenges (ibid.). However, cities do not act in a void. While they try to influence and contribute to the national, regional, or even international governance of global challenges, research from IR, urban studies, and international law shows that cities are also both restricted and (at times) empowered by other actors and structures of multi-level political systems (Nijman 2016; Ward 2019, 94; Durmuş 2021, 49–50).

A theoretical approach that captures this mutual constitution of structure, actors, and agency particularly well is role theory, especially its symbolic interactionist version (Wehner and Thies 2014, 414). Originally derived from sociology and social psychology, role theory has re-emerged in IR and Foreign Policy Analysis as an interdisciplinary approach over the last two decades, offering scholars the opportunity to situate research between dichotomous positions of constructivism and rationalism (Aggestam and Johansson 2017, 1208). Following a symbolic interactionist role theory approach, this article defines roles as “social positions which are constituted by ego and alter expectations regarding the purpose of an actor in an organized group” (Harnisch 2013, 6). Roles consist of three sources (Aggestam 2004, 89; Harnisch 2011, 8; McCourt and Glencross 2019, 36):

An actor's self-perception;

The alter-perceptions and expectations of others communicated through language or actions; and

An actor's positioning in the structural environment composed of intersubjectively held ideas and practices.

Symbolic interactionist role theory argues that roles can serve policymakers as roadmaps to provide guidance for action (McCourt and Glencross 2019, 26); however, even though roles define a potential range of appropriate and feasible strategies and options, they do not determine such outcomes (Aggestam 2006, 13, 20–21). While roles constitute subjective cognitive constructs held by specific actors, it is their intersubjective dimension that is crucial for connecting actors, agency, and structure (Bengtsson and Elgström 2012, 94): to form an effective roadmap for action, a role conception must be shared by other actors and must make sense within a given structural environment (ibid.). McCourt and Glencross (2019, 26) demonstrate that role holders may, at times, try to strengthen their roles by using language that “casts” other actors into complementary roles, a process called “alter-casting”.

Despite a broad range of studies exploring the roles that national governments (Holsti 1970; Walker 1987; Wendt 1999), international organizations, and non-state actors play at the international stage (Aggestam 2004, 2006; Elgström and Smith 2006; Bengtsson and Elgström 2011, 2012), a role theory analysis of cities’ transnational agency is curiously absent in role theory research, with the noteworthy exception of Ljungkvist's case study of New York City (2014; 2016). Ljungkvist's work provided important inspiration for this article's theoretical frame and research design, which strive to explore how cities came to claim a role in global migration governance and how they attempt to play this role at the global stage. However, in contrast to Ljungkvist's focus on a city-specific role (New York City's role in security and climate change policies), this article explores how a number of cities contribute through interaction — between one another, as well as with other actors such as international organizations, city networks, and national diplomatic representations — to the collective, discursive construction of a role of cities in global migration governance. To make the difference clear: the empirical analysis presented here shows that interviewed city representatives highlighted, above all, the importance of a voice and role of cities in global migration debates, rather than emphasizing specific roles of individual cities such as the role of Athens or the role of São Paulo (e.g., interviews Athens 2019; Bristol 2019; Kampala 2020; Milan 2020; São Paulo 2020; Zurich 2019). Exploring this city role opens up new perspectives to role theory research on collective role construction of local governments. Furthermore, working with a theoretical approach suitable for analyzing the mutual constitution of actors, agency, and structure can enrich migration studies’ toolbox for exploring the emergence of new actors or forms of agency in migration governance. In this sense, role theory's actor-centered focus may complement more issue-centered frame analysis that migration researchers have used to examine how certain policies, practices, or positions came into being (e.g., Campomori and Caponio 2017; Dekker 2017; Spencer and Delvino 2019).⁵ Moreover, role theory itself stands to benefit from its introduction into migration studies, as this middle-range theory is applied to a new policy field — migration policy — and to a new group of actors — cities engaging in global migration governance.

Methodology — Developing an Interdisciplinary Research Design

Introducing role theory to migration studies forms the basis for an interdisciplinary research design that explores the emergence of city diplomacy in global migration governance. Following a theory-guided inductive strategy, the research presented here made use of “role” as a theoretical sensitizing concept to guide and focus the empirical investigation. In contrast to the more rigid testing of hypothesis, sensitizing concepts allow for an iterative dialog between theory and the empirical material (Blaikie 2010, 118–119; Ljungkvist 2016, 93). Given that roles as social constructs cannot be studied directly, I focused on the three role elements — (1) self-perception, (2) alter-perception, and (3) an actor's positioning in the structural environment, as well as on (4) possible instances of alter-casting — to develop guidelines for semi-structured expert interviews (Kaiser 2014) and qualitative thematic structuring content analysis (Kuckartz 2016).

Following Thies’s (2017, 670) advice to focus on highly salient cases when applying role theory to a new policy field or type of actor, I adopted a most-important case design (Friedrichs and Kratochwil 2009, 718). While such a theoretical sampling strategy prevents results from being generalizable, it is particularly useful for exploring emerging phenomena by focusing on cases that “represent the most significant illustration of the phenomenon of interest” (Ljungkvist 2016, 100). In this article, the phenomenon of interest is cities that claim agency and act in global migration governance. City representatives’ active engagement on migration topics at the global level, thus, figured as a central selection criterion. Such engagement could take various forms, including playing active parts in city networks or developing contributions to the Global Compacts processes. To avoid including cities that made one-off appearances at one international conference or another, only cities that assumed formal or informal leadership positions in initiatives or city networks addressing migration topics at the global level were selected as most important cases. Therefore, interviewees included representatives from cities leading an informal group engaging in the development of the GCM and GCR, heading the Mayors Migration Council (MMC), chairing the Global Parliament of Mayors (GPM), or representing the Global Mayoral Forum on Human Mobility, Migration, and Development. Among interviewed actors were representatives from Amman, Athens, Bristol, Freetown, Gaziantep, Kampala, Los Angeles, Mannheim, Milan, Montréal, New York, São Paulo, and Zurich. Interviewing city representatives from both the Global North and Global South helped address a geographic research bias in migration studies, which too often focus primarily on host cities from the Global North (Lacroix 2021, 1). During interviews, city representatives shared insights into municipal motivations to engage in global migration governance, presented perspectives on cities as actors in global migration governance, and discussed barriers, enabling factors, and objectives of global-level city diplomacy.

In addition, I conducted interviews with other actors central to what role theory would call the structural environment under study — in this case, global migration governance. Among these interviewees were representatives from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.⁶ Furthermore, I interviewed representatives from five city networks and city organizations particularly active in global migration governance — the GPM, the Mayors Mechanism, the MMC, Metropolis, and United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). These interviews provided alter-perspectives on the motivations, potentials, limits, and risks of cities engaging in global migration governance.

The empirical investigation showed that national governments often held rather critical opinions regarding city engagement in (global) migration governance. However, capturing this perspective via interviews proved highly challenging, since many national representatives, rather than openly criticizing city diplomacy, presented it as a non-issue in global migration governance on which they were not able to comment in interviews. Therefore, I chose a more indirect approach to explore the effects of this “silent treatment” on the city role by inquiring about how city representatives perceived the positions of national governments on their claims to agency and their actions in global migration governance. These insights were complemented with six additional interviews conducted with academic experts researching either city engagement on migration at different levels of governance or city diplomacy in migration policy and related policy fields. Such interviews served both for exploration, in an early stage, and for checking the plausibility of preliminary findings throughout the analysis.

Overall, this article is based on 33 qualitative interviews of 30 to 60 minutes each, conducted between 2019 and 2020, as well as an extensive document analysis of press releases, speeches, conference documents, and reports published by the interviewed actors and covering the period 2014 to early 2020. The timeframe was established based on background research, as it was in 2014 that the first city networks started to work on migration (beyond questions of integration) at the global level. In addition, many city representatives identified 2014/2015 as the start of their cities’ global-level engagement on migration topics during interviews. The decision to close the study in early 2020 was made before the COVID-19 outbreak, since by this time, important structures of city diplomacy, such as the MMC and the Mayors Mechanism, had been established, the GCM and GCR had been adopted, and the first GCR review forum had been held. Nevertheless, the global pandemic reinforced this decision, given that data on city diplomacy obtained prior and after the worldwide travel bans and lockdowns would no longer be comparable. Developing such comparative analysis would certainly be interesting for future studies but goes beyond this article's possibilities and intentions.

Both documents and interviews were analyzed, using qualitative thematic structuring content analysis, following Kuckartz (2016). The role theory framework developed above guided the deductive category formation to examine whether/how (1) cities’ positioning in the migration governance context, (2) the self-perceptions and alter-perceptions on cities and (3) cities’ alter-casting of states enabled them to claim a role in global migration governance. Different forms of city diplomacy action were subsequently identified and mapped inductively.

A central delimitation of this research design consists in the fact that results are specific to a particular actor and a particular context — cities engaging in global migration governance. However, the analysis aims not toward the transferability of the research results, but toward the transferability of the analytical role theory framework, which can serve migration studies as a new tool to advance research on emerging actors in migration governance as well as on city diplomacy in interdependent policy fields (e.g., climate change, sustainable development, or health).

A New Role for Cities in Global Migration Governance?

This article's analysis is divided in two parts, each responding to one of the two research questions presented in the Introduction section. This section explores how it became possible for cities to claim a role in global migration governance. Applying a role theory framework to the analysis of city agency in global migration governance shows that the combination of (1) changes in the migration governance environment in which cities operate, (2) shifts in the self-perceptions and alter-perceptions on cities, and (3) municipal alter-casting of national governments facilitated the emergence of a socially constructed city role. Building on this discussion, the second part of the analysis explores the question of how cities (attempt to) play this role at the global stage.

Setting the Scene — Migration Governance in a Changing World

Causes and effects of global phenomena such as migration, climate change, or inequality cross-national borders and evolve in strongly interconnected ways (Curtis 2016, 462). Despite remaining central actors on the international stage, states can no longer hope to find solutions through unilateral actions or mere state-to-state cooperation (Foster and Swiney 2019, 19; Fernández de Losada 2019, 19). At the international and, to some extent, regional levels, this dilemma has engendered a shift from government to governance as a collective strategy to address global challenges (Ljungkvist 2016, 76; Curtis 2016, 467). Referring to the work of Thomas Weiss, the UN defines global governance as

the complex of formal and informal institutions, mechanisms, relationships, and processes between and among states, markets, citizens, and organizations, both intergovernmental and non-governmental, through which collective interests on the global plane are articulated, rights and obligations are established, and differences are mediated. (Weiss, as quoted in ECOSOC 2006, 4)

This concept of global governance opens new opportunities for local governments to engage in global policy processes. First, the concept broadens the range of actors entitled to participate in addressing global challenges. These actors do not only come from diverse backgrounds (e.g., civil society, the private sector, and the public sector) but also operate on different scales, ranging from the local to the global (Ljungkvist 2016, 76–77).⁷ Second, the governance concept provides the basis for debates on a normative conceptualization of democratic action in a context of interdependence and globalization (ibid., 76). This conceptualization can be summarized as follows: in a globalized world, where a majority of the population is affected by interconnected global challenges and where governance decisions may have various intended and unintended effects, collaborative and participatory governance is necessary not only to ensure effectiveness but also to maintain the democratic legitimacy of decision making (ibid.). As migration and displacement become increasingly urban phenomena around the globe, cities are at the forefront of dealing with these global challenges (Thouez 2014, 8). In a 2017 letter to the High Commissioner for Refugees, city leaders reminded UNHCR that while “the iconic image of a refugee is a person residing in a camp, today at least 60 percent of the world's refugees reside in urban areas” (Browser et al. 2017, 1). By 2018, over 60 percent of refugees and 80 percent of internally displaced persons (IDPs) were living in cities (Foster and Swiney 2019, 22; UNHCR 2019c, 57). In the words of the Mayor of Freetown:

At a time when more than 55 percent of the world's population live in cities, governments and international frameworks cannot afford to make choices without consulting city leaders. (Aki-Sawyerr 2018)

In sum, conceptualizing the globalized world with its interdependent challenges as a complex system in which legitimate action can be taken through multi-stakeholder and multi-level governance opens new opportunities for local governments to demand that their voices be heard in migration governance. Cities base these demands on the argument that their local expertise and knowledge on addressing global challenges can increase the effectiveness and legitimacy of national, regional, and international policy-making (Acuto 2014, 77, 84).

However, not only cities, but also international organizations and international agreements, have played a major role in discursively urbanizing and glocalizing worldwide phenomena such as migration (Blank 2006; Klaus 2018; Kosovac and Pejic 2021). Glocalization, understood as “the way in which globalization involves the creation and incorporation of locality” (Oomen 2016, 10), can be found in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), and the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) (United Nations 2015, 2018, 2019). All these intergovernmental agreements highlight the local dimension of global challenges (Kosovac and Pejic 2021, 87) and emphasize the importance of including local authorities in developing solutions for displacement, social cohesion, and economic development, while underscoring that international actors should work with and through local structures (United Nations 2015, 2018, 2019). Cities’ positioning in the global governance of migration is, thus, closely related to processes of urbanization and glocalization of questions of international migration that had previously been considered of relevance for national or intergovernmental actors and fora only. Having explored cities’ positioning in the global governance of migration, we shift our analytic focus to the two remaining sources of role conceptions: self-perception and alter-perception of cities as actors on the global stage.

Presenting the Cast — Cities as Glocal Actors

Breaking out of framing cities and urbanization as aggravating factors hindering global development, the UN-Habitat Conferences and the World Urban Forum have contributed to spreading the message that cities can play important roles in developing innovative solutions to global problems in the twenty-first century (Bouteligier 2014, 59). Cities are, thus, no longer considered only spaces where global challenges, such as inequality, poverty, and environmental pollution, manifest most clearly but also environments potentially conducive to innovation that bring people together to find solutions through joint action (Abdullah 2019, 10). Does such a change of perspective also extend to the role of cities in addressing migration and displacement? The following analysis focuses, first, on the alter-perception of cities presented by states and international organizations, before turning to the self-perception of city actors.

The qualitative content analysis showed that between 2014 and 2020, international organizations and states increasingly recognized the importance of municipal actors as local policy implementation partners when addressing migration and displacement on the ground (e.g., UNHCR 2018; United Nations 2018, 2019). In 2015, IOM dedicated the International Dialogue on Migration, as well as the eighth World Migration Report, to the topic “Migrants and Cities: New Partnerships to Manage Mobility” (IOM 2015). UNHCR, in turn, organized the 2018 Dialogue on Protection Challenges under the title “Protection and solutions in urban settings: engaging with cities” (UNHCR 2018).

While the GCM and GCR mainly highlight the role that local authorities can play as local-level policy implementers, these agreements also contain some cautious language referring to the importance of local expertise for policy planning and strategizing. Signatory states of the GCR acknowledge that local authorities play a central role as first responders in displacement situations, and the Compact states that knowledge sharing among city networks and cities shall be supported by UNHCR and other stakeholders (United Nations 2018, paragraph 37 and 38). In the GCM, signatory states acknowledge local authorities’ experience and commit to

[i]nvolve and support local authorities in the identification of needs and opportunities for international cooperation for the effective implementation of the Global Compact and integrate their perspectives and priorities into development strategies, programmes and planning on migration, as a means to ensure good governance as well as policy coherence across levels of government and policy sectors, and maximize the effectiveness and impact of international development cooperation. (United Nations 2019, paragraph 39)

Following the adoption of the GCM, IOM expanded its support for global-level city diplomacy: in cooperation with the city network UCLG and the diplomacy-oriented MMC, IOM started co-steering the Mayors Mechanism, launched in 2018 as an integral part of the GFMD (Mayors Mechanism 2022a). The Mayors Mechanism institutionalizes cities’ access to intergovernmental debates, aims to bridge gaps between local realities and global debates, and “creates opportunities for cities to influence the GFMD discussions” (GFMD 2019; Mayors Mechanism 2022a). An IOM representative explained this emerging shift in perspective at the international organization from cities as local policy implementers to cities as multi-level governance actors as follows:

More and more, we see that local authorities are becoming de-facto migration governance actors. And the problem is that they do not have the necessary devolution of power nor access to the necessary financial resources to be able to play that role. Therefore, we want to make sure, as part of our mandate as the UN organization on migration, that we bring those decentralized levels of governance to the table when migration is being discussed and debated in global frameworks. (Interview IOM 2019)

Similar positions were expressed at a virtual event co-organized by UNHCR and the Global Task Force on Migration showcasing city contributions to the GCR in 2021. The event report, co-published by UNHCR, called for empowering “cities through increasing opportunities for their meaningful participation in national and global policy formation” (UNHCR 2021a, 2).

International organizations may have a particular interest in gaining allies among representatives from cities and city networks that hold progressive positions on migration policies based on solidarity and burden-sharing (Lacroix 2021, 1). As such, international organizations may consider local authorities strategic partners at not only the local but also the global level, “in particular in domains where intergovernmental cooperation is clogged up” (ibid., 13).

Moving from alter-perceptions to self-perceptions, the analysis revealed that cities themselves contributed actively to shaping and defining their role in global migration governance throughout the research period. Similar to research by Acuto and Curtis, the analysis showed that in particular mayors engaging in transnational activities highlighted cities’ glocal role and capacities to tackle global issues in innovative and pragmatic ways (Acuto 2014, 77–78; Curtis 2014, 12). Concretely, city representatives argued that by combining local experience with global-level action, cities could help strengthen migration policy coherence between policy sectors and levels (e.g., interviews Athens 2019; Bristol 2019; Kampala 2020; Mannheim 2020; Zurich 2019). However, to do so, cities would need opportunities to influence the migration governance context in which they operate (ibid.). In an article published shortly before the adoption of the GCM in December 2018, the Mayors of Athens, Bristol, and Kampala argued,

As mayors who represent cities of origin, transit, and destination, we have a shared interest in cooperating to ensure that migration is safe, orderly, and humane, and that refugees are protected. To be effective, such cooperation must include engaging in migration diplomacy and policymaking at the regional and international levels. (Kaminis, Lukwago and Rees 2018)

In accordance with Ljungkvist's findings in the context of security and environmental policies (Ljungkvist 2014, 53–54), the analysis showed that a small but growing number of cities were developing new self-understandings and a new sense of self-worth throughout the research period, centered on their self-perception as glocal actors in international contexts (e.g., interview Athens 2019; Bristol 2019).

In sum, this conceptualization of cities as glocal actors, connecting local and global spheres of governance, in an environment where global challenges must be addressed jointly by local, national, and international actors via multi-level governance provides some answers to the question of how cities came to claim a role in global migration governance. However, the analysis revealed that the examined cities not only showed that they could be involved in defining policies on migration and displacement but also claimed that they should be involved in such work (e.g., Browser et al. 2017; Aki-Sawyerr 2018; Kaminis, Lukwago and Rees 2018). To justify this demand, many representatives of the studied cities painted a specific picture of the role played by national governments in intergovernmental negotiations, a process known in role theory as “alter-casting” (McCourt 2012, 371). Next to self-perceptions and alter-perceptions, as well as an actor's positioning in the structural environment, alter-casting constitutes the final element relevant for role construction within this analysis of a city role in global migration governance.

In Further Roles — National Governments Struggling to Find Solutions

City diplomacy research argues that cities’ transnational involvement is, at times, motivated by a frustration with states’ failure to commit to meaningful cooperation regarding global challenges (Acuto, Morissette and Tsouros 2017, 17). In the words of a representative from Bristol:

Mayor Rees now often talks about how national governments are incapable of dealing with the world the way it is and that global governance needs to move into a new and next iteration, which involves cities and networks of cities sitting alongside national governments as equal players. And that is obviously a long-term vision. We are not going to achieve that overnight. But that is why we are fighting for a seat at the table. (Interview Bristol 2019)

Many city representatives interviewed for this study highlighted the lack of national political will to cooperate and find collective solutions to address displacement and migration as a major challenge for local authorities (e.g., interviews Athens 2019; Los Angeles 2020; New York 2020). As a representative of Athens explained:

All of these initiatives [transnational city cooperation] are very interesting in a very hostile context, where you have EU member-states abdicating not their rights but their obligations to participate as a Union. And then you have cities taking over, saying, “Look, this is important for us that we are in.” And then you can have the same approach on a global level. This became a reality with the Global Compact for Migration and the Global Compact on Refugees, where you had cities declaring their interest in the implementation of the Global Compacts, even though their states did not sign. New York, for example. Major American cities signing the Mayors Declaration.⁸ You had Milan signing for Italy. (Interview Athens 2019)

Local authorities, thus, conceptualized the role played by many national governments as guided by national interests and unilateral strategies. This conceptualization echoes the normative discourse of pro-urban literature comparing interactions of states and cities: while authors consider states to base international cooperation on independence and sovereignty, cities are depicted as relational and networked actors recognizing the importance of addressing transnational challenges in interdependent ways (Barber 2014, 22–24, 66–70). IR and urban scholars have rightfully criticized such black-and-white comparisons as overly simplistic (Bassens et al. 2019, 1). Nevertheless, in practice, city representatives justified the need for transnational municipal partnerships at times by referring to a lack of intergovernmental solutions (interviews Athens 2019; Los Angeles 2020; New York 2020). For instance, in 2016, the Spanish city of Barcelona signed a cooperation agreement with the Italian municipality of Lampedusa, as well as with the Greek municipality of Lesbos, to provide technical support regarding refugee reception (Barcelona Ciutat Refugi 2016). At a press conference organized to announce the agreement, Ada Colau, then Mayor of Barcelona, declared that if states failed but cities managed to support migrants and asylum-seekers, Barcelona considered it an obligation to come to the aid of these cities (ibid.). As the relationship between Catalan city governments and the Spanish national government is rather complex, due to Catalonia's aspirations for greater autonomy or even independence (Garcés-Mascareñas and Gebhardt 2020, 2), there may also be broader political motivations and domestic political debates connected to such proactive city engagement (ibid.). Beyond the Catalan context, such domestic political debates and power struggles may influence both alter-casting and different cities’ motivations to strive for a global-level role in migration governance. This article, however, cannot confirm or reject this hypothesis, as city representatives rarely discussed domestic power struggles or political affiliations during interviews. Further research connecting this article's global-level investigation with in-depth local-level case studies could prove beneficial for addressing such questions.

In sum, then, the combination of these three elements — the glocalised migration context, the glocal role claimed by cities, and the passive role attributed to states — offered cities leeway to demand a role in global migration governance. But can they actually play this role in practice?

Playing a Glocal Role on the Global Stage

To provide answers to this question, we must recall that symbolic interactionist role theory considers roles roadmaps that can provide actors with feasible and appropriate options for action (Aggestam 2006, 20–21, 24–25; Elgström and Smith 2006, 6). The central question for the second part of this analysis is, therefore: did city representatives draw on the glocal city role to promote certain forms of city diplomacy as feasible and appropriate forms of city action on the global stage? This discussion builds on an extensive mapping of city diplomacy in global migration governance based on the interview and document analysis. It zooms in on three of the most prevalent forms of city diplomacy action: (1) advocating for rights-based migration governance, (2) seeking access to international funding, and (3) working toward institutionalized city participation in global migration governance.

Walk the Walk — Cities Advocate Accountability

Advocating the collective positions of locally elected representatives can lend cities operating through city networks a special weight when engaging in international debates (Curtis 2014, 12). However, such claims must undergo critical reflections; after all, not all municipal leaders are appointed through general elections, an issue that may raise questions about city diplomacy actors’ accountability. Furthermore, so far, only a small number of (mostly) capital or major cities, often from the Global North, have engaged in different policy areas on the global stage, restricting the representativeness of city diplomacy through biases related to geographic origin and size (Acuto 2014, 72; Garcia Chueca 2019, 105). Despite these limitations, cities have the potential to bring an important perspective on migration to the global stage, as they are closer to the local population and local challenges than national governments and, in contrast to non-governmental organizations, form part of the government and hold political mandates (Thouez 2018; Van Haasen 2020, 268). International organizations can, therefore, benefit from exchange with representatives from cities and city networks to strengthen the legitimacy of their own policy proposals and decisions (Cogan 2021, 160).

However, cities can also use their glocal role to challenge national or international migration policies and practice. Many cities under study here did so by denouncing negative local consequences of national or international (in)action (alter-casting) as well as publicly referring states and international organizations to international law. For instance, following Euro-Mediterranean states’ refusal to receive the rescue ship, Sea Watch 3 in 2019, 12 German cities founded the city alliance, “Bündnis Städte Sicherer Häfen” (Alliance of Cities as Safe Havens) (Bündnis Städte Sicherer Häfen n.d.), and demanded, in a public letter to the German Minister of the Interior, a swift, humane, and solidarity-based German admission policy centered on the national obligation to respect the UN Refugee Convention and international maritime law (Fassbinder et al. 2019, 1–2). As this example shows, cities can try to hold states accountable to their own values, norms, and commitments (Oomen 2016, 11). Human rights constitute a particularly important reference point for cities in this regard. The Mechelen Declaration, adopted by cities at the Global Conference on Cities and Migration in 2017 and presented as an official input to the intergovernmental GCM negotiations, is an interesting case in point. In this document, cities committed to

Work with States to fulfill at the local level their [States’] international commitments to ensure full respect for the human rights of refugees, internally displaced persons and migrants, regardless of their migratory status. (IOM, Mechelen Declaration 2017, 4)

Building on this commitment, signatory cities advocated for universal access to basic services, e.g., in healthcare, education, and justice, regardless of a person's legal status, and for the creation of firewalls between data collection and service providers (ibid., 5). Doing so, they tied local issues that most national governments considered extremely controversial back to internationally established human rights standards. By linking cities’ local interests with international norms and global commitments, cities drew on their glocal role, thereby presenting global-level advocacy for rights-based migration governance as an appropriate and feasible city activity.

Fundraising — Cities Demand Access to International Funding

Cities can, thus, play a role in holding states accountable to international law that protects the rights of migrants and refugees. However, cities are also aware that a rights-based discourse and calls for national responsibility and action are not enough to improve situations in cities of origin, transit, and destination if adequate funding does not reach the local level and if national and international actors addressing urban migration and displacement do not consider local authorities to be relevant partners (MMC 2022a). These arguments were strongly promoted by city representatives during the Global Refugee Forum 2019 and the GFMD 2020/2021 (UNHCR 2019b; Mayors Mechanism 2021a, 2021b). They can also be found in a joint brief on municipal access to finance by the MMC, UN-Habitat, and the UN Capital Development Fund, published in 2022 (MMC 2022b). In cooperation with city networks, some cities, therefore, used their glocal role to seek access to international funding and to find partners for local-level cooperation among international organizations and philanthropic actors.

A recent example is the Global Cities Fund (GCF), launched in 2020 by the MMC in partnership with the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, IOM, UCLG, UN-Habitat, and UNHCR (MMC 2022c). Arguing that cities often lack adequate access to funding to support migrants, refugees, and IDPs, the GCF finances inclusive city-led projects (MMC 2022d). Its first chapter invited local authorities from around the world to submit locally led project proposals aiming at inclusive COVID-19 crisis management and recovery (ibid.). A multi-partner selection committee chose projects proposed by local authorities from Barranquilla, Beirut, Freetown, Lima, and Mexico City to receive funding over a 12-month period (ibid.). Building on this inaugural round, the partners of the GCF collaborated with 20 cities situated predominantly in the Global South to publish a project prospectus that presented local priority projects in the form of concrete funding proposals that national donors, philanthropic organizations, and humanitarian and development actors could select for investment (MMC 2021a). Following the publication of the project prospectus, the Hilton Foundation announced its support for funding proposals submitted by the local authorities of Addis Ababa, Kampala, Medellín, and Quito in June 2021 (MMC 2021b). In 2022, the GCF launched a second chapter focusing on inclusive climate action, with financial support from the Robert Bosch Stiftung (MMC 2022e). Arguing that cities are capable of addressing global migration challenges through local action, city organizations such as the MMC drew on the glocal city role as a roadmap to promote cities’ efforts to gain access to international funding as both an appropriate and (at least technically) feasible city diplomacy action.

Cooperating — Cities Demand a Seat at the Table

However, some cities have come to realize that local-level cooperation with national and international actors addressing urban migration and displacement may not be enough to achieve coherent migration governance connecting the local, national, and global levels. As first responders to migration and integration challenges, a growing number of cities, therefore, insist that their expertise be included more systematically in global migration policy development (Brandt 2018, 3; interviews Athens 2019; Bristol 2019). As a consequence, representatives of cities and city networks strive to formalize and institutionalize cooperation with intergovernmental fora and international organizations (Durmuş 2021, 50). The following analysis zooms in on three salient examples of such cooperation efforts: (1) city engagement in the state-led negotiations of the GCM, (2) the Mayors Mechanism's establishment within the intergovernmental GFMD, and (3) the creation of the diplomacy-oriented MMC.

For many cities, the processes surrounding the negotiations of the GCM and GCR (2016–2018) constituted the starting point of their active transnational commitment (Thouez 2020). Throughout the Compact negotiations, city positions were mostly coordinated on an ad-hoc basis, benefiting from spaces for exchange and coordination provided, for instance, by the Open Society Foundations, the Brookings Institute, or the New York Peace Institute (interviews Athens 2019; Milan 2020). In cooperation with these and other partners, as well as with city networks, city representative managed to adopt and communicate joint positions on the Global Compacts’ objectives. Contributing to the GCM and GCR debates through direct input sent to the GCM co-facilitators, the Mechelen Declaration, a public letter to the High Commissioner for Refugees, as well as statements by UCLG, the Global Mayoral Forum, and Metropolis, local governments highlighted the value of their local expertise for international policy development and defended their interests on topics such as universal access to basic services (UCLG 2018; Metropolis 2017; Mayors Mechanism 2018a; IOM 2017; Browser et al. 2017). Figure 1 provides a detailed overview of city engagement in the development of the GCM. At the fifth Global Mayoral Forum on Human Mobility, Migration and Development in 2018, held back-to-back with the intergovernmental conference to adopt the GCM, Valerie Plante, Mayor of Montreal, emphasized that

Cities are key players in developing and implementing innovative migration programs. They are leaders in the migration process and know what works and what's needed on the ground. That's why mayors around the world came together in order to influence the outcome of the Global Compact for Migration. (MMC 2018, 1)

In particular, cities such as New York and Los Angeles, whose federal government took a critical stance on the GCM, justified their transnational engagement with the need to counter national passivity, thus making active use of alter-casting (interviews Los Angeles 2020; New York 2020).

Figure 1.

City Engagement in the Development of the GCM.

While city representatives managed to mobilize and coordinate certain positions in the rather short time span of less than a year and a half (late 2017 to late 2018), their engagement remained restricted by the hesitant reaction from national governments. Despite the openness of the GCM co-facilitators (Switzerland and Mexico) and despite support for city diplomacy from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), nation-states did not follow the recommendations of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration to include municipal representatives in national delegations during GCM negotiations. Nevertheless, city representatives and city networks managed to show presence at and contribute to the GCM development process, as well as to the first GCM review process — the International Migration Review Forum in 2022 (Mayors Mechanism 2022b).

Outside the UN system, the proposal to establish a Mayors Mechanism within the intergovernmental GFMD, specifically supported by Ecuador, Germany, and Morocco, formalized the relationship between the city-led Mayoral Forum and the state-led GFMD in 2018 (Mayors Mechanism 2018b). It is quite remarkable that the Mayors Mechanism is co-steered by two city organizations, the MMC and UCLG, in cooperation with an international organization, namely IOM (Mayors Mechanism 2022a). This collaboration may well open new dialogue channels between cities and international actors. Furthermore, the Mayors Mechanism offers local authorities a global platform to interact with states and to bring city positions into the state-led GFMD (GFMD 2019; Mayors Mechanism 2022a).

The third example of city action striving to institutionalize city diplomacy in global migration governance is the MMC. Incubated with the support of philanthropic actors and directed by a board of nine mayors from around the world, the MMC was established in 2018 to coordinate and bring municipal positions into intergovernmental negotiations, thus enabling cities to play a glocal role (MMC 2022f),⁹

The Mayors Migration Council, working with existing networks, will ensure that local governments have a strategic and powerful voice on the international front on the issue of migration, so that polices are grounded in the actual experience of cities, which is where most of the world's migrants and refugees live. (Valerie Plante, Mayor of Montreal, MMC 2018)

In their key activities and communication, both the Mayors Mechanism and the MMC have promoted the idea of cities as glocal actors of migration governance. They have drawn and continue to draw on this city role to argue that cities’ pursuit of institutionalized participation in global migration governance should be considered an appropriate and (through these institutions) feasible city activity.

In sum, all three forms of city diplomacy action — (1) advocating for rights-based migration governance, (2) seeking access to international funding, and (3) working toward institutionalized city participation — can be considered instances of role play. This conclusion is derived from the observation that cities (and other actors, such as international organizations, city networks, the SDC, and philanthropic actors) drew on the glocal city role as a roadmap to promote and justify these three forms of city diplomacy as appropriate and feasible city actions in global migration governance.

Limits of City Diplomacy in Global Migration Governance

Despite these developments, cities have a long way to go to be recognized as partners in governing global challenges. While international agreements such as the GCM and GCR do, indeed, mention cities as important actors in developing local solutions and translating international policies into local realities (United Nations 2018, 2019), they do not go so far as to endorse formal city representation in global migration governance. In the words of a representative from Bristol,

Cities self-evidently have a lot to offer in that discussion because it is at the city level where all the action is in terms of migration. It is where they come from, it is where they transition through, it is where they end up. Yet the current global governance structures are quite resistant to cities having a direct voice inside. (Interview Bristol 2019)

As nation-states have long been accustomed to being the main protagonists in migration governance, the great majority of national governments showed themselves reluctant, to say the least, to recognize the emergence of a new actor throughout the research period (Stürner 2020: 38). However, there are first exceptions, as the following statement by a representative from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development speaking at the International Migration Review Forum 2022 demonstrates,

Germany believes that the participation of local governments in global migration governance is essential. Local governments are the ones confronted with realities of migration but also have knowledge and access to migrant populations. (Mayors Mechanism 2022c)

To ensure an added value of city diplomacy in global migration governance and to overcome cooperation barriers between local, national, and international actors, cities and their partners (e.g., international organizations, states, civil society, research institutes, and philanthropic actors) must address the risks and unintended consequences of transnational municipal engagement, including open questions of representativeness and accountability, North–South biases, self-selection, network multiplication, and fragmentation of the city diplomacy landscape (Acuto 2014, 72; Garcia Chueca 2019, 105). City organizations such as the MMC strive to overcome these challenges by proactively reaching out to intermediary cities and by promoting leadership of cities from the Global South in the Council's activities and leadership board (MMC 2022f).

Next to these risks, there are several constraints limiting cities’ capacities to play a glocal role. First among them is a lack of human resources and funding, making international organizations, philanthropic actors, and city networks important door openers but also potential gatekeepers for cities (Kosovac and Pejic 2021, 89; Angenendt, Biehler and Kipp 2021, 17). Consequently, cities walk a fine line between benefiting from these actors’ cooperation and support and maintaining actual ownership of the city role and municipal agenda-setting in global migration governance. As roles are always co-shaped by self-perceptions and alter-perceptions, such processes do not question the existence of a role per se but may bring to light essential issues regarding legitimacy and accountability.

Equally important, most cities engaging at the global level promote very progressive narratives that highlight the benefits of migration, often in opposition to more restrictive and security-oriented national positions (Kaminis, Lukwago and Rees 2018). However, more critical local voices must also be heard to develop joint strategies based on broad support. In the end, cities should not be included in regional or international debates on migration because they promote certain (progressive) narratives but because municipal expertise (representing a broad range of positions) is fundamental to creating vertically coherent migration policies.

Conclusion

In a globalized world where interdependent challenges evolve across national borders and affect actors from the local to the global level, the importance of multi-level and multi-stakeholder governance processes is becoming ever greater. These globalization effects can open up transnational scopes of action for cities to engage in city diplomacy. As global migration challenges are retranslated into urban contexts, international organizations and a growing number of states recognize cities’ local expertise as integration actors (e.g., United Nations 2018, 2019; IOM 2015; UNHCR 2021b). Against this background, cities proactively shape a glocal role in global migration governance by linking local (integration) expertise to global migration issues. Moreover, cities strengthen their normative claims to participate in global migration governance by deploring the lack of intergovernmental solutions to displacement and migration. At the outset, this article asked how it became possible for cities to demand a role in global migration governance and how cities attempt to play this role. The analysis showed that there is much value in focusing on (1) a move from government to governance in a glocalized migration context, (2) on changing self-perceptions and alter-perceptions of cities as actors on the global stage, and (3) on the passive role cities attribute to states. In combination, these three developments offer cities leeway to demand a glocal role in global migration governance. Cities draw on this glocal role to promote and justify various forms of city diplomacy as appropriate and feasible kinds of action, thereby using the glocal city role as a roadmap for city diplomacy in global migration governance.

This article's theoretical and methodological contributions to migration studies are two-fold. First, it identifies and addresses important research gaps on city diplomacy in global migration governance. Migration studies’ “local turn” has opened up new perspectives on city agency and action in local, national, and regional governance systems (e.g., Caponio and Borkert 2010; Zapata-Barrero, Caponio and Scholten 2017; Filomeno 2017). However, city actors’ recent engagement in global processes of migration means that it is high time for migration scholars to make the “local turn” go global by expanding the analysis to the global governance level.

Second, this article has developed an interdisciplinary research design that introduces role theory to migration studies. Focusing on the mutual constitution of actors, agency, and structure, this analytical role framework complements more issue-focused frame analysis applied by migration scholars (Campomori and Caponio 2017; Dekker 2017; Spencer and Delvino 2019). While the findings presented here are specific to the cities under study, the analytical framework developed in this article may be transferred to the analysis of city diplomacy at other governance levels or in other policy fields. Such transfers could strengthen comparative city diplomacy research between IR, urban, and migration studies.

Regarding future research on migration city diplomacy, researchers may focus on potential lines of conflict that could emerge between cities. As cities gain visibility in global policy debates on migration, contentious issues may come to the fore between cities of origin, transit, and destination, such as the dilemma between recruiting high-skilled labor versus avoiding braindrain. A second area of interest lies in policy-oriented research exploring how a broader range of city voices could be included in global city diplomacy to strengthen representativeness and ensure dialogue between cities holding different positions on migration. Finally, migration research may investigate questions of ownership of city diplomacy, as such issues gain in relevance with the first steps of city diplomacy institutionalization in migration governance. Essential questions to ask would be: Who brings cities to the global stage? Who co-shapes the agendas of city conferences? Who gets to decide what kind of actors cities are on the global stage, what they want, and how they should act? Answering these questions will be central to interpreting future developments of global-level city diplomacy.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The first version of this article was presented at a workshop of the European University Institute in 2019. I would like to thank the organizers Tiziana Caponio, Moritz Baumgärtel, and Andrea Pettrachin as well as the discussant Jacqueline Broadhead and the anonymous reviewers of this journal very much for their valuable feedback and support.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Janina Stürner-Siovitz

Notes

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