Voice After Exit: the Prioritization of Homeland-Facing Foreign Policy Among the Hong Kong Diaspora

Abstract Citizens around the world have migrated under the shadow of authoritarianism, and many are increasingly acquiring political and voting rights in their host countries. Yet we know little about the content of their foreign-policy preferences or the salience with which they prioritize homeland-facing issues relative to domestic concerns. We argue that experiences of authoritarian rule prior to migration generate anti-regime sentiments among diasporas, inclining them toward hawkish foreign-policy positions toward the homeland regime. These preferences heighten the salience of homeland-facing foreign policy, even relative to highly consequential domestic issues. We test this argument with harmonized candidate-choice experiments administered to an original sample of Hong Kong diasporas in four host countries (Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States). We find that respondents strongly preferred candidates advocating hawkish economic and geopolitical policies against China. These foreign-policy positions were consistently prioritized over salient domestic issues such as healthcare and the economy, and this structure of preferences held across subgroups with varying degrees of host-country integration and homeland ties. Our findings provide novel experimental evidence that diasporas continue to care intensely about and voice on behalf of their homeland even after exit.