34 Diaspora Activism and the Dynamics of Voice They also indirectly wield vertical voice against authoritarian regimes by launching insurgencies and undermining regimes’ attempts to control information and resource distribution. In these ways, movement actors talk back to regimes through their actions. By emigrating to freer societies, exit facilitates the survival of movements in the wake of repressive crackdowns in the home-country and allows movements to survive in “abeyance” (Taylor 1989). Exit to democracies also presents “political opportunities” for activists to engage in new types of resistance (Quinsaat 2013; Sökefeld 2006; Tarrow 2005). Political opportunities signify changes to actors’ contexts that make them more inclined to enact voice, whether owing to the reduction in risks or because of their potential to make alliances with decision-makers, or both (McAdam 1999[1982]; McAdam et al. 1996; Meyer 2004; Tarrow 2011). Diaspora members who settle in democratic contexts should therefore gain political opportunities to engage in both horizontal voice (among each other) and vertical voice (to authorities). At the same time, as scholars have recently come to point out, transnational activism is not a consistent feature of diaspora life (Betts and Jones 2016; Chaudhary and Moss 2019; Duquette-Rury 2016; Guarnizo et al. 2003; Koinova 2011, 2018; Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004; Waldinger 2008, 2015). Their movements can certainly be efficacious in shaping the homeland in their image (Hockenos 2003). But although “ethnic” lobbies have incurred a reputation as influencers in home-country and international affairs (e.g., Huntington 2004), diaspora members’ public, collective claims-making activities are episodic, and even downright rare in some communities. Yet, relatively little is known about how their collective efforts for change in the homeland come about in the first place, or why their mobilization dynamics vary within and across national groups. Because diaspora movements can potentially build nations and tear them down, understanding when, how, and the extent to which diaspora members’ loyalties transform into voice against illiberal regimes remains an important topic of inquiry. Under what conditions, then, do diaspora members wield voice after exit against dictatorships? By treating anti-regime collective action as a phenomenon warranting explanation – that is, taking up voice as a dependent variable – this study shows why diaspora mobilization against authoritarian regimes is a highly contingent phenomenon. 1.3 deterrents to voice after exit Building inductively on the comparison of Arab Spring movements abroad, I argue that diaspora movements’ shared origins, grievances, and political opportunities are insufficient for explaining voice after exit for several reasons. Chief among them is the fact that, as Levitt and Glick Schiller (2004) argue, diaspora members who retain transnational ties to a country of origin are “simultaneously” embedded in political, social, and economic conditions in https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press