Cold feet on foreign soil? How repressive threats shape migrants’ political engagement

How do repressive threats in countries of origin influence migrants’ political participation after migration to new countries? While migrating to new countries is often assumed to provide opportunities for political voice, this study reveals a more complex picture. Drawing on survey data from Ukrainian, Polish, and Argentinian migrants in Western democracies, we examine how repressive threats in their home countries continue to shape political engagement across borders. We distinguish between experienced threats (negative consequences of protest participation at home) and perceived threats (awareness of repression at home). We find that repressive threats generally increase migrants’ diasporic political participation in host countries. However, the mechanisms diverge over time. While the mobilizing effect of experienced threats fades as migrants settle, the effect of perceived threats significantly increases. Furthermore, a list experiment reveals that migrants factor arrest risk into their thinking about home-country protest significantly more than non-migrants who remain there; and this effect is driven specifically by perceived threats. Overall, the findings show that repressive threats at home remain crucial to the political calculus of migrants. Rather than escaping repressive threats, migrants carry them, which in turn shape their political engagement.