Belarus’s Diaspora Politics Through the Lens of Authoritarian Resilience

The groundbreaking 2020 political events in Belarus incentivised the Lukashenka regime to completely redesign its diaspora policies. Until then, Belarus was remarkably passive in its engagement with the diaspora and diaspora politics was nearly missing as such. The post-2020 period saw a broad array of actively shaped restrictive, coercive, and constraining diaspora policies affecting the quickly growing Belarus’ emigrant populations. Such policies included various additional restrictions on exit and entry, highly publicised trials in absentia over exiled political opponents, severe limitations over the scope of consular services provided for diasporans, and subjecting their Belarus-based families to higher home utility tariffs. Based on the concepts of selective inclusion and exclusion of diaspora populations (e.g. Tsourapas 2021) and the targeted safety valve strategy (Michel et al. 2023), the article examines the operating logics of the Lukashenka regime behind the busily crafted diaspora governance in 2020–2025.