Immigration Policy

The Backdoor to Transnational Repression

Date Published

August 5, 2026

Citizen Lab researchers Siena Anstis, Marcus Michaelsen, and Kate Pundyk write for the Foreign Policy Centre that the increasingly restrictive migration policies of democratic countries are incompatible with their claims of countering transnational repression.

The authors argue that “host states cannot claim to counter repression across borders while ignoring the role their immigration policies play in enabling it.”