Section 1: An Introduction to Transnational Repression The term transnational repression describes how authoritarian states “reach across national borders to silence dissent among diaspora and exile communities.”5 It can be distinguished from so-called soft power efforts in that transnational repression “do[es] not seek to win influence through the powers of attraction, but instead aim[s] to divide, subvert, co-opt, and coerce.”6 States that engage in transnational repression use a variety of methods to silence, persecute, control, coerce, or otherwise intimidate their nationals abroad into refraining from transnational political or social activities that may undermine or threaten the state and power dynamics within its borders. Thus, nationals of these states who reside abroad are still limited in how they can exercise “their rights, liberties, and ‘voice’” and remain subject to state authoritarianism even after leaving their country of origin.7 Indeed, transnational repression breaks down boundaries between domestic forms of control and efforts aimed at controlling those who reside abroad.8 It is a phenomenon that “challenge[s] the singular conceptualization of sovereignty and encourage[s] new understandings of the idea of ‘state space.’”9 Rather than managing a territory with boundaries and closed borders, authoritarian states are now increasingly managing the “‘space of flows,’ the ever-shifting transnational spaces formed by travel, migration, and international financial structures.”10 The result is the production of “a ‘state effect’ far beyond their own frontiers.”11 5 Nate Schenkkan and Isabel Linzer (2021), “Out of Sight, Not Out of Reach: The Global Scale and Scope of Transnational Repression,” Freedom House at 3 <https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/ files/2021-02/Complete_FH_TransnationalRepressionReport2021_rev020221.pdf> [Schenkkan and Linzer, Freedom House Report]. 6 Ibid at 8. 7 Dana M Moss (2016), “Transnational Repression, Diaspora Mobilization, and the Case of The Arab Spring,” Social Problems 63(4) at 481 <https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/63/4/480/2402855> [Moss, “Case of the Arab Spring”]; Fiona B Adamson (2020), “Non-State Authoritarianism and Diaspora Politics,” Global Networks 20(1) at 153 <https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12246>. 8 Fiona B Adamson and Gerasimos Tsourapas (2020), “At Home and Abroad: Coercion-by-Proxy as a Tool of Transnational Repression,” Freedom House <https://freedomhouse.org/report/specialreport/2020/home-and-abroad-coercion-proxy-tool-transnational-repression> [Adamson and Tsourapas, “Coercion-by-Proxy”]. 9 David Lewis (2015), “‘Illiberal Spaces:’ Uzbekistan's Extraterritorial Security Practices and the Spatial Politics of Contemporary Authoritarianism,” Nationalities Papers 43(1) at 141. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid at 143.