2 MOSS ET AL . INTRODUCTION Research over the past several decades has brought attention to diasporas as global actors who influence homecountry affairs (Adamson, 2013, 2016; Brinkerhoff, 2009, 2016; Koinova, 2021; Shain, 2005; Smith & Stares, 2007; Vertovec, 2009), and exiles, émigrés, and emigrants who gain new rights and liberties in their countries-of-settlement have the potential to fuel socio-political change at home in a number of ways. By forming transnational advocacy networks dedicated to supporting victims of regime abuses, diaspora movements have the potential to threaten authoritarian rulers’ legitimacy, stability, and even sovereignty (Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Moss, 2022). Studies show that activists, journalists, and human rights defenders residing abroad can subvert regime censorship, expose abuses, fund local opposition groups, and pressure host-countries to intervene (Betts & Jones, 2016; Quinsaat, 2019; Tarrow, 2005). At the same time, diaspora activism is often a dangerous affair. Authoritarian regimes have long relied on ‘transnational repression’ to track and punish dissenters abroad through surveillance, harassment, and violence (Basar & Öztürk, 2020; Cooley & Heathershaw, 2017; Dalmasso et al., 2018; Furstenberg et al., 2021; Glasius, 2018a, 2018b; Jörum, 2015; Michaelsen, 2018; Moss, 2022; Tsourapas, 2021). From the 1940 murder of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City on Stalin’s orders to the 2018 assassination of journalist and activist-in-exile Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul by Saudi agents, authoritarian rulers go to great lengths to silence their opponents abroad (Human Rights Council, 2019). A recent investigation by Freedom House (Schenkkan & Linzer, 2021) demonstrates that 608 assaults, assassinations, detentions, and renditions were committed against émigrés in 79 host-countries by 31 different governments between 2014 and 2020. This research also shows that, in light of the ‘democracy recession’ in the world today (Repucci & Slipowitz, 2021), the deployment of violence against anti-regime diaspora members is on the rise. At the same time, regimes do not necessarily need to reach across borders in order to subjugate their opponents in other states. Instead, they also rely on ‘proxy punishment’,1 repressing diaspora members’ non-activist relatives and contacts in the home-country as a means to silence, undermine, and punish dissenters abroad. For example, after Abdul Rahman Al-Saleh, a member of the Syrian opposition-in-exile in Germany, accused the Assad regime of corruption on Al-Jazeera in 2020, regime forces arrested his family in Syria, adding them to the growing list of detained and disappeared relatives of opponents abroad (New Arab, 2020). Research published over the past five 5 notes that a range of regimes from the Middle Eastern region, Asia, and Africa are actively exploiting transnational family ties to exert control among their populations abroad (Amnesty International, 2017, 2020; Adamson & Tsourapas, 2020; Hirt & Mohamed, 2018; Human Rights Watch, 2019a, 2019b; Lemon, 2019; Lemon et al., 2017). Despite the importance of this phenomenon, however, the forms and effects of proxy punishment remain curiously understudied. To fill this gap, this paper addresses how authoritarian regimes use proxy punishment to exert extraterritorial control over their diasporas and the mechanisms that shape activists’ strategic adaptations. While this paper is not the first study to acknowledge proxy punishment (Moss, 2016) or ‘coercion-by-proxy’ (Adamson & Tsourapas, 2020), it is the first to systematically unpack this transnational repertoire and to theorize its effects on diaspora dissidents. By analysing original data on Syrian, Iranian, Egyptian, and Libyan diaspora activism, we first identify the repertoire of proxy punishment wielded against dissidents. Second, we show how diaspora activists’ responses to these multifaceted threats were driven by the respective weight of their (a) commitments to politicized, principle-driven action and their (b) host-country social capital. Strong commitment made diaspora members willing to challenge regimes despite the costs, while social capital helped to offset those costs. In other words, political commitment provided the ‘will’ to undertake high-risk activism, while social capital provided the ‘way’, that is, the means, to support activists and their families. In contrast, those with weak commitment and a lack of social capital felt compelled to adopt a strategy of going silent out of fear for their families. We also find that strong commitment combined with weak social capital motivated activists to navigate between protective and principled action. As we explain below, navigation strategies enabled individuals to remain active, but also forced them to cut their transnational ties and self-censor their advocacy. We conclude with theoretical implications for studies of transnational networks, authoritarianism in a globalized world, and state repression.