Theorizing the spatiality of ICT-mediated transnational repression: Evidence from China’s repression of Uyghurs in Turkiye

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed burgeoning scholarly interest in how authoritarian states use transnational repression to intimidate and punish their citizens abroad. Our freshly collected surveys and in-depth interviews with members of the Uyghur diaspora in Turkiye reveal that China’s transnational repression of the Uyghur diaspora goes beyond preventing political mobilization. With the use of Internet Communication Technologies (ICTs), China employs widespread repression against ordinary Uyghurs by cutting off their communication lines with their homeland and through the Chinese police constantly harassing and threatening them, mostly through social media applications. Despite the growing body of literature on transnational repression, the spatial dimension of ICT-mediated transnational repression remains relatively undertheorized. Building on the literature of critical geopolitics, digital geographies, and Foucault’s concept of panopticon this study theorizes that China’s ICT-based practices beyond its borders have led to the configuration of “a transnational social space of insecurity,” which constitutes an idiosyncratic form of repression and spatiality by affecting diaspora Uyghurs’ everyday practices through the pervasive use of tech-based apparatuses and mechanisms. This idiosyncratic space constitutes and is constituted by “disciplinary” and “automated” subjects pushed toward constant self-surveillance and self-discipline. While China has physically turned East Turkestan into an open prison through political education camps, forced labor in production chains, ubiquitous installation of CCTV cameras, and frequent police control on phones and computers, ICTs enable China to transfuse its repressive system to the transnational domain by creating a parallel social space, which functions as its quasi-spatial extension.