Consider a material which is superconducting below Tc.

If the temperature is initially above Tc, application of

a steady magnetic field will result in full penetration
of the field into the material. If the temperature is now reduced
below Tc, the internal field must disappear. When a material makes the transi
tion
from the normal to superconducting state, it actively excludes magnetic
fields from its interior, this is called the Meissner effect .
This constraint to zero magnetic field inside a superconductor
is distinct from the perfect diamagnetism which would arise from its zero elect
rical resistance. Zero
resistance would imply that current current loops would be
generated to exactly cancel the imposed field(Lenz s
law). Thus we can define superconductor on the basis of Meissner effect i.e. the
materials which exclude magnetic fields from the interior.
The magnetic lines of flux flow from the north
pole to the south pole, and do not penetrate the superconductor at all.
At a tiny microscope level there are imperfections in the superconductor, these
allow a tiny amount of flux to get through the semiconductor, and
flow out the other side, these small flows of flux through it is enough to stabi
lize the
superconductor, holding it in place. This effect is responsible
for keeping the superconductor from moving to higher or lower
magnetic field level and thus stabilizing it in the magnetic field.
The word pinning is used because superconductor is pinned in space above a magne
t.
This effect is shown by type-II semiconductors only because type-I semiconductor
s cannot penetrate the magnetic field.