Solidarity solidarity refers to the idea of unity, mutual support, and shared responsibility among individuals or groups facing common challenges. It highlights cooperation, collective action, and standing together to promote equality, social justice, and community strength. The concept is widely used in social, political, cultural, and humanitarian contexts.
Solidarity means agreement and support among members of a group, particularly when people share interests, goals, or a political purpose. It creates a sense that people should stand together when they face a common situation or important challenge. In everyday life, people may show solidarity with member states, communities, workers, or people facing injustice. A public speech, for example, can express support for a country’s leaders or citizens during a difficult period. The idea also connects with acceptance, concordance, assent, consent, and a shared feeling that people should act together rather than remain separate.
The meaning of solidarity becomes clearer when we look at how people behave toward one another. A community may develop social solidarity through a shared identity, while a workplace may build solidarity through a trade union or an organization of workers. The history of Poland provides a major example because Solidarity became the name of a trade union that began in 1980 and played an important role in the movement toward free elections in 1989. The word can also describe support for victims of wrongdoing, cooperation among supporters, or a willingness to protect people who belong to the same wider community.
Solidarity can appear through religious solidarity, national identity, ethnic solidarity, neighbourhood solidarity, or civic duty. It can also operate through networks, clientelistic ties, and other relationships that create shared responsibilities. In some households, people depend on monetary income as well as a functional solidarity system inside and outside the home. A society may also protect traditional solidarity through its mechanisms, while questions about national sovereignty, socially excluded groups, and access to the means and factors of production can shape how people understand collective responsibility.
Examples of solidarity
Real examples show that solidarity works as more than an abstract idea. People can demonstrate an obligation to stand with victims of wrongdoing, support socially excluded communities, or strengthen social solidarity during periods of pressure. A positive politeness strategy can highlight involvement, common membership, and intimacy, while shared identity can encourage people to protect one another. These examples show why solidarity can influence personal relationships as well as wider social structures.
Different forms of solidarity can appear around national identity, religious solidarity, ethnic solidarity, and neighbourhood solidarity. People may also connect solidarity with civic duty and election messages, especially when they believe their individual interests depend on the wellbeing of others. The idea of a free rider creates an opposite problem because someone may benefit from collective action without contributing to it. Strong dissenting voices can also challenge how a group defines its shared interests and responsibilities.
The concept also appears in academic discussions of structural dimension, hypotheses, shared identity, networks, and corresponding pressures. These examples show that solidarity can develop at many levels, from households and communities to political institutions. It can protect access to traditional solidarity, the mechanisms that sustain it, and the means and factors of production that allow people to participate in social life.
Collocations with solidarity
English commonly places solidarity beside words that describe visible actions and emotions. An act of solidarity can involve practical assistance, public support, or cooperation with people experiencing hardship. Newspapers and government propaganda have sometimes described assistance to refugees as an act of solidarity and brotherhood, especially when that support strengthens a country’s resolve or contributes to national identity.
An expression of solidarity can also connect people around a village identity or a shared concern about village limits. In these situations, people communicate that they belong to the same community or recognise a common responsibility. The phrase helps describe solidarity as something people can express openly rather than simply hold as a private belief.
A feeling of solidarity can develop when people recognise their connection with others. This explains why terms such as support, unity, assistance, shared interests, group, and community often appear naturally alongside solidarity. These combinations help readers understand how the word works in real English.
What is solidarity? Reconstructing the meanings of the modern idea buy solidarity solidarity
The modern idea of solidarity goes beyond a simple dictionary definition of unity between people with shared interests, goals, and shared aims. One important interpretation describes solidarity as leaning out of the self toward the other. This approach presents solidarity as a relationship in which people move beyond individual concerns and recognise the needs and experiences of others.
The modern concept developed strongly during the early 19th Century, when growing cities changed traditional patterns of life. People increasingly left traditional models of living and pursued individual life projects. In this changing environment, solidarity offered an alternative to viewing society only through fraternity, brotherhood, or charity. It suggested a more diverse and emancipating society in which individualised, unconnected people could still develop common interests and work toward political liberation.
This history connects solidarity with major principles of modern democracy, particularly freedom and equality. The concept therefore remains relevant when people ask how different communities can cooperate without losing their differences. The discussion of solidarity also connects with peace building, the European Solidarity Centre, Poland, and academic work involving the Centre for Geopolitics and Wolfson College Humanities Society.
Key words Solidarity
Solidarity can describe collective wellbeing created through reciprocal empowerment. Unlike simple sympathy or charity, solidarity works as a social relation in which people contribute to a common good according to their abilities. This relationship can strengthen social movements because people recognise their interconnectedness and use collective action to pursue wider transformation. Although empathy and altruism can encourage people to care about others, the historical development of solidarity also comes from the material realities of class struggle.
The political use of the term expanded during the mid-19th century, when capitalist industry and the growing alienation of working people encouraged organised resistance. This environment helped turn solidarity into a principle of combination and conflict, rather than merely a personal feeling. Eugene V Debs, in his 1894 pamphlet The Solidarity of Labour, connected solidarity with the highest good of working people, human fellowship, fraternity, mutual sympathy, and an interest in each other’s welfare. Later thinkers such as Jodi Dean described solidarity through group boundaries, commitments, shared interests, and common cause. Her approach presents solidarity as an interaction involving people who decide to stand together against a shared problem or shared enemies.
This idea becomes practical when people connect different struggles. Factory workers in Shenzhen, indigenous peoples in Chile, and a shop assistant in London may experience different circumstances while still facing related systems of exploitation or inequality. Solidarity can connect concerns such as women’s rights, prison abolition, and ecological sustainability. It can appear through boycotts, blockades, strikes, protests, care, generosity, and mutual aid. Mutual aid combines assistance with empowerment and can encourage cooperation. Solidarity therefore becomes action: people work with comrades, both local and international, and combine different strategies and tactics to turn shared material interests into collective action for a common good.
The wider discussion also includes Solidarity of Strangers, Dean Spade, Mutual Aid, crisis, Leah Hunt-Hendrix, Astra Taylor, and the idea of a world changing idea. Mark Steven, a lecturer at Exeter University and author of Splatter Capital, presents solidarity as something people must build and put into action. These perspectives reinforce the idea that solidarity does not simply exist by itself; people create it through relationships, shared commitments, and action.
Solidarity a relic of the past, or an urgent principle for our times?
The debate over whether solidarity is a relic of the past or an urgent principle continues today. The work of Right to Remain and the Solidarities project explores solidarity through migrant deservingness, welfare, and migration across Denmark, Sweden, and the UK. This work shows how people continue to use solidarity when they discuss asylum, migration, community support, and unequal access to resources.
In practical situations, solidarity can mean empowering each other rather than simply offering help. This distinction separates solidarity from charity, which can create a more hierarchical relationship between the person giving assistance and the person receiving it. The idea of standing alongside somebody presents a more equal relationship. The Bristol Bisons, an LGBTQ+ rugby team, demonstrated this approach when members accompanied teammate Ken Macharia during a situation involving the Home Office and the risk of being detained.
Solidarity also means building common ground. People can recognise a common cause and understand that what affects others affects you. At the same time, solidarity requires honest discussion about inequalities, privilege, British citizenship, immigration status, whiteness, and financial comfort. Historical examples include the miners’ strike in Britain, Lesbians and Gay Support the Miners, Lesbians and Gay Support the Migrants, and labour support for mill workers and enslaved Africans in the United States.
The term has become especially common in progressive discourse in the UK, while alternatives such as community spirit have appeared in political discussions in Denmark and during the Covid-19 pandemic. The wider political debate has also involved Mette Frederiksen, David Cameron, the Big Society, the European Union, member states, asylum claims, and the Dublin Regulations.
Today, solidarity remains relevant to migrant justice, traditional left politics, and trade union politics. People may struggle to give the word enough substance and detail, but practical solidarity continues through communal action and support between people. Even when spontaneous gestures become harder, the underlying principle remains useful: people can recognise shared problems, build relationships, and act together rather than treating social difficulties as purely individual concerns.
What is solidarity?
The European Union describes solidarity as a shared value strongly connected with European society. In this context, solidarity defines the European project by providing unity during current crises and offering a moral ground for collective responses. The concept can also provide a compass for European youth and their aspirations for a better Union.
The idea reaches beyond political institutions. People can explore solidarity through practice examples, events, videos, podcasts, and articles that show how the value works in everyday and public life. Resources such as Europe Talks Solidarity also encourage people to examine the concept through different perspectives.
Taken together, these meanings show why solidarity remains a flexible but powerful word. It can describe agreement, support, unity, common interests, mutual aid, and collective action, while also referring to historical movements, political relationships, social struggles, and everyday cooperation.
Oversight: I did not intentionally omit any major semantic or contextual term from the extracted material. Some source-specific proper names, titles, and repeated terms have been integrated naturally rather than repeated mechanically where the same term appeared multiple times.
Solidarity Solidarity Overview
Solidarity solidarity refers to unity, mutual support, and shared commitment among people or groups with common interests or goals. It involves standing alongside others, recognising shared challenges, and taking collective action. The concept can apply to communities, workers, social movements, political groups, and international relationships where cooperation strengthens a common cause.
Solidarity Solidarity FAQs
What does solidarity mean?
Solidarity means unity, agreement, and support between people or groups who share interests, goals, responsibilities, or a common cause.
What is an example of solidarity?
An example of solidarity is people supporting workers during a strike, communities helping one another during a crisis, or groups standing alongside people facing discrimination or injustice.
What is a synonym for solidarity?
Common synonyms include unity, support, cooperation, togetherness, agreement, fellowship, mutual support, and collective commitment. The best synonym depends on the context.
What does it mean to show solidarity with someone?
Showing solidarity means standing alongside someone, supporting their situation or cause, and recognising that their concerns may connect with wider social or shared interests.
What is solidarity in a sentence?
A simple example is: “The community showed solidarity with the workers during the difficult period.” Here, solidarity means offering support and standing together.
What does a person in solidarity mean?
A person in solidarity supports another person, group, or cause and is willing to stand alongside them because of shared values, interests, or concerns.
What are some examples of solidarity?
Examples include mutual aid, community support, workers’ movements, protests, boycotts, humanitarian assistance, and support for people affected by injustice or hardship.
How do you pronounce solidarity?
In UK English, solidarity is pronounced approximately sol-id-AIR-i-tee, with the main stress on the third syllable.