94 Coming Out and Coming Together uprisings demanding the fall of ruling regimes, protesters in Libya, Yemen, and Syria became embroiled in prolonged battles against dictatorships over the course of 2011 and beyond. The regimes’ violent responses to peaceful protesters calling for bread and dignity sent shockwaves into diaspora communities. These uprisings were what many exiles had been waiting for their whole lives, and the rebellions at home reinvigorated their activism. The Arab Spring also transformed many diaspora members’ suppressed anti-regime sentiments into public calls for liberation and voice. The emotions that these groups felt while watching the uprisings unfold from afar – rage, horror, hope, and excitement – might have been sufficient to inspire mobilization (Goodwin et al. 2001; Jasper 1998, 2018; Nepstad and Smith 2001). For the diaspora members in this study, however, two hurdles posed significant obstacles to voice, that is, public, collective claims-making against authoritarianism. As I explained previously, the operation and effects of transnational repression made non-exiles too fearful and mistrustful to wage either horizontal or vertical voice against the regimes. Conflict transmission also divided anti-regime members, sapped their efficacy by directing grievances toward one another, and undermined their willingness to act collectively for a common goal. Emotions played an important role in what happened next, but diaspora members needed other conditions to fall into place in order to overcome these obstacles to transnational activism. In order to explain the Arab Spring’s significant effects on diaspora mobilization, this chapter builds on the theory of “quotidian disruption” proposed by sociologist David Snow and his collaborators (1998). Snow et al. argue that major disruptions to the quotidian – that is, the normative routines and attitudes that guide everyday life – stoke mobilization by motivating previously disempowered actors to engage in activism. Extending this theory to diasporas and their transnational practices, I propose that the disruptions caused by the Arab Spring stoked public, collective claims-making in the diaspora by undermining the normative operation and effects of transnational deterrents to activism – albeit in different ways and at varying times for each national group. Once these deterrents fell, diaspora members could at last capitalize on their civil rights and liberties abroad to express voice and consort with “stranger” conationals, thereby forging new protest movements, organizations, and coalitions for change at home. As this chapter explains, the Arab Spring first undermined the normative operation and effects of transnational repression for Libyans and Syrians by changing the circumstances of their loved ones at home. First, when diaspora members’ relatives and friends were harmed, forced to flee, or became embroiled in the fighting, individuals abroad were released from the obligation to keep their anti-regime views a secret in order to protect their loved ones in the homeland. Second, acute regime brutality against peaceful, vanguard activists – such as Hamza al-Khateeb, a young Syrian teenager who was mutilated and tortured to death in unspeakable ways by regime agents early in the https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press