Articles

The Golden Age of Transnational Repression, by Nate Schenkkan – 2 October 2025

From Journal of Democracy

This is the golden age of transnational repression, or the targeting of exiles and diasporas by the states they left behind. Freedom House research shows that people were targeted with direct, physical transnational repression in 103 host states by 48 origin states from 2014 to 2024. The number of host states, origin states, and incidents has grown each year since Freedom House started publishing data in 2021. This “golden age” is due to a convergence of multiple factors: growing impunity for authoritarian actions abroad; the spread of powerful information and communications technologies (ICT) that have increased the relevance of diaspora politics and the capacity of states for transnational repression, both digital and non-digital; market forces that have lowered the financial cost of transnational repression and created new models of surveillance and subversion; and increased migration globally, which has increased the pool of potential targets and spurred efforts in many host states to make migration more difficult and more dangerous. Finally, the essay identifies reasons to expect that the problem has not peaked. The consolidation of modernized, globally integrated authoritarian states; the subversion of international norms against extraterritorial violence; the pace of technological change; and a backlash against migration in democracies all make it more likely than not that transnational repression will continue to grow as a problem.

This is the golden age of transnational repression. More states now have more tools to target more exiles and diaspora communities in more countries for fewer resources than ever before. Since 2021, Freedom House has published an annual dataset on global incidents of transnational repression. The latest edition, covering 2014 to 2024, catalogs 1,219 direct physical incidents perpetrated by 48 origin states in 103 host states. At least a quarter of the world’s governments are pursuing emigrés in more than half the world’s countries. Each year that Freedom House has published these data, the number of host states and origin states has grown, with increasingly dramatic incidents becoming regular occurrences—whether the murder of a Sikh activist by Indian agents in Canada, bounties placed on Hong Kong activists by China, or plots by Russian intelligence services against exiled journalists and others in the United Kingdom.

Transnational repression shapes how activists, journalists, and regular people living abroad express themselves, associate, and assemble. It is among the practices reshaping global governance in favor of the states that practice transnational repression, carving pathways to suppress dissent and keep regimes in power, even when they are faced with mobilization outside their borders. Transnational repression is one component of an emerging illiberal international order, in which states cooperate to create webs of surveillance and control that span the globe. People who cross borders, who are already subject to extra scrutiny and precarity, are especially vulnerable to this new order.

The drivers behind transnational repression’s increasing prevalence are global. First among them is the growing impunity for authoritarian practices. A decadeslong shift in the global balance of power away from the United States and its allies has emboldened China, India, and Turkey. Smaller states, too, such as Rwanda and Tajikistan, have found ways to leverage their position within the system to pursue targets abroad. At the same time, the influence of governments most likely to raise human-rights concerns has weakened, as has their willingness to do so. This turn away from commitments to liberal democracy and international human rights—together with the open use by the United States and Israel of extraterritorial tactics such as assassinations or kidnappings—has undermined norms against such actions and made it harder to hold states accountable for them. A new crop of rising middle powers, including India and Turkey, has taken note of this lack of consequences and adopted such tactics themselves, often justifying them as part of their own “war on terror.”

The second driver is technological change. Digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) have increased the relevance of diaspora politics, as the speech of those abroad can be more easily transmitted back into their origin states. But ICTs have also increased states’ capacity for transnational repression. They now have digital means to silence citizens living abroad. Diaspora groups and exiles, especially those who are politically active, face constant surveillance and harassment through social media and messenger accounts.

Technology underpins other forms of transnational repression as well, as origin states use information they have gathered to identify people’s locations and target them for physical violence. It is also how states most commonly employ “coercion-by-proxy,” communicating via digital means threats against exiles’ family members or loved ones who are still in the origin country. Lastly, ICTs enable faster and more efficient information sharing among states about wanted individuals, whether on bilateral, regional, or global bases. As technology has grown not only more sophisticated but also cheaper and easier to use, more states are able to deploy it transnationally.

Third, a growing marketization of authoritarian services has increased the number of states that can carry out large-scale, highly sophisticated transnational-repression operations. By working with organized criminal groups and others as proxies, states trade the efficiency of more professionalized operations for volume, obfuscation, and reduced risk. “Outsourcing” espionage operations, including those related to transnational repression, builds upon means of hiring, paying, and communicating with workers that are part of the global shift toward “gig economies.” And the private spyware market has made powerful remote-surveillance capabilities that were previously the domain of the world’s most sophisticated intelligence services available to any state willing to pay. In other words, thanks to technological advances and marketization, more states are able to do more outside their borders with fewer resources.

Finally, increased global migration has expanded the number of potential targets for transnational repression, and the political turn against migration has made interstate cooperation in transnational repression more likely. Most physical transnational repression takes place through cooperation between states to detain and return people unlawfully to their origin countries, and the most common means of doing so is through migration systems. As major political parties and populations in popular destination democracies have turned against immigration, these states have aggressively expanded immigration-enforcement operations and weakened safeguards against abuses in migration systems, such as measures to prevent origin states from influencing asylum procedures. When emigrés get caught in the system, opportunities for transnational repression by origin states multiply.

As a modernized form of authoritarianism consolidates globally, technological advances accelerate, and the safest host states enact increasingly hostile migration policies, transnational repression will become an ever-greater problem.

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Nate Schenkkan is an independent expert on human rights and global authoritarianism. Most recently, he was senior director of research at Freedom House, where he designed the first-ever global data-collection project on transnational repression. He is coauthor of multiple Freedom House reports on transnational repression and other topics as well as the annual reports Nations in Transit and Freedom in the World.

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