Journal
SOCIAL PROBLEMS
Volume 63, Issue 4, Pages 480-498Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1093/socpro/spw019
Keywords
transnationalism; repression; social movements; diasporas; Arab Spring
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation [1433642]
- University of California
- Irvine's Kugelman Citizen Peacebuilding Research Fellowship
- Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies' Research Award
- Center for the Study of Democracy
- Department of Sociology's Summer Fellowship
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie [1433642] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Divn Of Social and Economic Sciences [1433642] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Do authoritarian states deter dissent in the diaspora? Using data on Libyan and Syrian activism in the United States and Great Britain, this study demonstrates that they do through violence, exile, threats, surveillance, and by harming dissidents' relatives at home. The analysis finds that the transnational repression of these diasporas deterred public anti-regime mobilization before the Arab Spring. I then identify the mechanisms by which Libyans and Syrians overcame these effects during the 2011 revolutions. Activists came out when (1) violence at home changed their relatives' circumstances and upset repression's relational effects; (2) the sacrifices of vanguard activists expanded their objects of obligation, leading them to embrace cost sharing; and (3) the regimes were perceived as incapable of making good on their threats. However, differences in the regimes' perceived capacities to repress in 2011 produced significant variation in the pace of diaspora emergence over time and guarded advocacy. The study advances understanding of transnationalism by demonstrating how states exercise coercive power across borders and the conditions under which diasporas mobilize to publicly and collectively challenge home-country regimes.
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