In the context of activism in solidarity with refugees in Italy in the “long summer of migration”, the article analyses the relationship between political claim-making and direct social actions, i.e. actions that do not primarily focus upon claiming something or other from the state or other power holders but that instead focus upon directly transforming some specific aspects of society by means of the very action itself. In this case, many different kinds of Dsa were put in place by Italian activists, from the emergency provision of food, clothes and blankets to migrants that have been blocked somewhere to the creation of officially recognised humanitarian corridors. Through the analysis of qualitative interviews to activists involved in solidarity with refugees in Italy between 2015 and 2017, the article identifies four different mechanisms of interaction between Dsa and political claim-making: