Internalized political repression: Legacies of authoritarianism in the U.S.‐based Syrian diaspora during the Arab Spring

Abstract

Authoritarian regimes are known to repress the political activity of their diasporas transnationally by threatening harsh sanctions. But is this their only mode of transnational repression? This article builds on scholarship on social control to explore whether migrants bring internalized forms of political repression from their authoritarian home country to their democratic country of settlement—and if so, how it shapes their transnational political activity. In‐depth life‐history interviews with 29 U.S.‐citizen and permanent‐resident Syrian immigrants living in Los Angeles, California and Louisville, Kentucky reveal that for many U.S.‐based Syrians, demobilizing emotions, interpretive frames, and habits learned in Syria depressed their transnational political activity during the Arab Spring. Four internalized mechanisms of transnational political repression are conceptualized: learned helplessness, chronic fear of politics and the State, political trauma, and disciplined aversion to political expression. Leveraging comparisons between activists, demobilized activists, and non‐activists, this article demonstrates the connections between specific political socialization experiences, internalized political repression, and transnational political (in)activity. This article contributes to the growing literature on constraints and barriers to transnational mobilization, and to the debate over the role of pre‐migration political experience on immigrants' political participation.