Received: 11 June 2020
Accepted: 16 March 2022
DOI: 10.1111/glob.12372
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Going after the family: Transnational repression
and the proxy punishment of Middle Eastern
diasporas
Dana M. Moss1
Marcus Michaelsen2
1
Department of Sociology, University of Notre
Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA
2
The Law, Science, Technology, and Society
(LSTS) Research Group, Vrije Universiteit
Brussel, Brussel, Belgium
3
Department of Politics and International
Relations, University of Southampton,
Southampton, UK
Gillian Kennedy3
Abstract
Diasporas play a critical role in home-country politics by supporting social, political, and economic change therein. Yet,
regimes countermobilize against activists abroad by repressing their diasporas. This paper investigates a widespread but
overlooked method in the transnational repression toolkit: that
of ‘proxy punishment’, that is, the abuse of family members
Correspondence
Dana M. Moss, Department of Sociology,
University of Notre Dame, 4060 Jenkins
Nanovic Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA.
Email: dmoss2@nd.edu
at home as a means to manipulate and subjugate dissidents
abroad. Using 246 original interviews with diaspora activists
from Syria, Iran, Egypt, and Libya, the analysis demonstrates
that regimes deployed five tactics against diaspora members’
Funding information
National Science Foundation’s Doctoral
Dissertation Improvement Grant 2014–15;
Kugelman Citizen Peacebuilding Research
Fellowship, UC Irvine; Center for Global Peace
and Conflict Studies Research Award, UC
Irvine; Center for the Study of Democracy, UC
Irvine; Summer Fellowship, Department of
Sociology, UC Irvine; European Union’s
Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation
Program; Information Controls Fellowship of
the Open Technology Fund; The Leverhulme
Trust Early Career Fellowship
non-activist families at home: harm and confinement, threats
and harassment, forced participation in regime propaganda and
slander, resource deprivation, and travel bans. We then identify the mechanisms shaping how diaspora members responded
to this repertoire. The paper concludes with implications for
research on transnational diaspora activism, globalized authoritarianism, and collective dimensions of the repression-dissent
nexus.
KEYWORDS
diaspora, global social movements, transnational advocacy networks,
transnational families, transnationalism
© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Global Networks. 2022;1–17.
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/glob
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