Transcending Borders, Bearing Scars: The Impact of Past State Repression on Migrant Political Participation in Germany

A large body of literature has been concerned with analyzing the different factors that impact migrants’ political participation patterns in their host countries, such as socio-economic contexts (Rooij, 2012; Wass et al., 2015), previous political identification (Wass et al., 2015; Rapp, 2018), and the new local environment (Bloemraad and Schönwälder, 2013; de Graauw and Vermeulen, 2016), among other factors. However, when it comes to migrants who fled repressive authoritarian regimes, the long-term consequences of state repression experienced in their home countries are surprisingly overlooked. Although the impact of repression has been investigated in relation to political behavior, existing literature either confines its scope within national boundaries (Young, 2016; Pollack, 2004) or focuses on state transnational repression of political dissent abroad but still within the context of the politics of the home country (Michaelson, 2020; Adamson and Tsourapas, 2020; Moss et.al, 2022). The long-term, transnational effects of past state repression in the sending country on the political attitudes in the host countries have not been researched so far. Focusing on the Syrian, Egyptian, and Afghani migrants in Germany, this article sheds light on the transnational long-term impact of state repression in their home countries to investigate the influence this has on their political participation behavior in German politics. By doing so, the article aims to contribute to filling in the gap in the literature on transnational repression and political participation of migrants in the politics of their host country by building a novel theoretical framework for understanding the causality between the two variables (i.e. state repression in home country, and political participation in host country politics) by investigating (1) how different types of repression experienced in authoritarian regimes affect people’s perceptions of the political system, trust in state institutions, and political motivation and (2) to what extent this particular repression heritage of state-society relations travels with migrants across nations and impacts their political participation behavior in democracies, like Germany. The study focuses on Syrian, Egyptian, and Afghani: 1) migrants and refugees who are still non-citizens (who usually resort to other forms of political participation activities, as they can’t vote) and 2) naturalized migrants, as this implies more political rights (voting). The choice of nationalities is based on the logic of researching a randomized selection of migrants and refugees who came from repressive regimes and experienced any type of repression. Drawing on a sociopolitical approach, both qualitative and quantitative will be used, conducting interviews and surveys across Germany, and collecting data from different sources such as the German Federal Statistical Office and the Socio-Economic Panel, just to name a few. This article aims not only to develop a transnational individual-level theoretical framework that fosters a more empathetic and informed discourse on the intersections of state repression and its long-term impacts, migration, and political participation across borders, but also offer insights to policymakers, practitioners, and academics working in those fields to recognize this important factor and its patterns of interaction with other existing factors when researching migrant political participation in the host countries.