16 Introduction empowerment and collective action. But activists like Shaima had wanted to do more. As I scrawled notes on planes, trains, and at protest events, so too were my jottings filled with question marks. The emergence of activism for the Arab Spring abroad clearly illustrates how diaspora movements can matter. Yet, four years of fieldwork on Arab Springinspired mobilization left me with a series of questions that needed answering. Why did so few diaspora members openly criticize home-country regimes, as Libyan American Hamid’s Enough Gaddafi! network had done, before 2011? Why did it take so long for many of them, especially in the Syrian community, to declare their allegiance to the Arab Spring openly in public? Why did many longtime anti-regime activists withdraw their support for the revolutions in Syria and Yemen? And why did many more conclude that their mobilization potential remained unfulfilled, despite an unprecedented showing of support in 2011? The more I immersed myself in the existing literature to find answers, the broader my questions became. In the parlance of social movement scholars, why would anti-regime diaspora members with political opportunities, resources, and network ties strategically refrain from speaking out against regimes? Why would collective action fragment and die off during a period of acute conflict and need in the home-country? Why do only some diaspora movements with significant privileges vis-à-vis their home-country counterparts succeed in fulfilling their goals? With the potential of transnational activism to make or break the peace at home, inattention to these questions is a serious lacuna. By investigating how these uprisings reached from the global periphery to diaspora communities at the world’s “center,” this book provides some interesting new insights. The next section elaborates why a comparison of Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni diaspora activism for the Arab Spring from the United States and Britain provides a useful set of answers. Following this, this book presents a new framework for explaining voice after exit against authoritarian regimes. 1.5 investigating libyan, syrian, and yemeni activism from the united states and britain It is sometimes hard to recall what the uprisings meant to those of us who watched them unfold on our screens in real time. I began graduate school just a few months prior to the uprisings with a plan to study social movements in the Middle East. Having spent time in Yemen, studying and volunteering for a local rights organization, I was intrigued by how social movements managed to exist at all, much less pursue human rights, in authoritarian contexts. To some, my topic came off as a curiosity. Responses by US-focused scholars along the lines of “are there social movements in the Middle East?” were not uncommon. These reactions changed after the Arab Spring uprisings emerged and inspired https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press