This study aims to explain the solidarity behavior toward a specific needy group that is not part of the national community (refugees) in comparison with vulnerable in-groups (the disabled or the unemployed), taking into account the interplay between individuals’ political orientations and their social dispositions based on the ranking preferences of solidarity beneficiaries. Through a multivariate regression analysis of survey data in eight European countries, we find that respondents’ ranking preferences have a lower impact on solidarity practices toward refugees, which are strongly fostered by progressive political orientations. This means that support for refugees relies on a universalistic conception of solidarity and entails political commitment to both leftist positions on economic issues and to libertarian stances on cultural issues. The latter only affect solidarity actions toward needy out-groups, unveiling the tensions between universalistic-particularistic concerns that are embodied in individual perceptions of deservingness between groups and in the cultural–identitarian dimension of political conflict.

This chapter investigates the role of axiological drivers in solidarity activism with refugees. It examines how universal value orientations denote normative and relational orientations of care and posits that refugee solidarity activism is driven by the activists’ universal caring orientations to all vulnerable groups. Overall, the chapter illustrates how universal value orientations and moral commitments shape and orient political activism with refugees based on common ideational solidarity projects. These conclusions are based on the analysis of data from a cross-national EU survey conducted in 8-EU countries between 2016 and 2017. Findings substantiate that axiological drivers, namely, universal value orientations and moral commitments, increase the predicted probability for engagement in refugee solidarity activism. Lastly, this chapter supports that in addition to attitudinal affinity and organisational embeddedness, refugee solidarity activism is a product of axiological drivers.