In the age of global migration and deepening transnational interconnections, authoritarian regimes extend their reach beyond national borders to monitor, intimidate, and silence perceived opponents abroad. This roundtable examines transnational repression not only as a threat to targeted individuals – often members of diaspora communities, exiles, and political dissidents – but also as a broader challenge to democracy.

In this panel, we discuss how practices such as surveillance, coercion, digital harassment, and proxy intimidation operate across borders, and highlight how such actions potentially undermine host states’ sovereignty and erode core civil liberties, including freedom of expression, association, and political participation. The discussion also focuses on the question of how transnational repression is experienced in everyday life by targeted individuals, including educational settings such as universities, as well as the ways host countries respond to these challenges.

The roundtable brings together scholars and practitioners to reflect on the evolving mechanisms of repression, the vulnerabilities created by global mobility, and the constraints, blind spots, and potential avenues for democratic institutions to address such threats.