On December 27, 2015, Naji Jerf was shot by a muffled pistol in broad daylight in Gaziantep, Turkey by an operative of the Islamic State (IS). He was a day away from relocating to France where his asylum application had been processed and accepted. While in Syria and in exile, he had worked on films exposing the IS. In his letter to the French embassy requesting asylum he noted that his safety has become more and difficult after an increase in the threats to his self and his family. Jerf was not the first to receive these threats in exile nor was he the last. Months later, on November, 2, 2016 Ibrahim Abdelqader and Fares Hammad were also killed. In an interview months later, after surviving an attempted assassination himself, Abdulqader’s brother Ahmed later reported that suspicion sept into his work, life, and sense of risk. He noted that he almost quit his job, but after escaping death he grew “more resilient than ever.” Moreover, a myriad of journalistic accounts and reports by human rights organizations have reported threats Egyptian activists in exile have received, and attempts of actual intimidation of their families back home. Despite these threats and risk, some exiles continue to be politically active. In this project, I investigate why, despite the associated risks, some people continue to mobilize for their home country from exile. I highlight the mechanisms by which exiles navigate their political victimization and subsequent trauma relative to their political participation. I ask: why do some exiled Syrian and Egyptian activists continue to be politically active for their home countries while others stop? More specifically, I am interested in uncovering a) how they navigate risks of transnational repression from their host countries b) and the consequences of political victimization and traumatic events they faced on their political participation. In this project I use a combination of ethnographic work and network analysis. My case selection focuses on exiled activists from Syrian and Egypt who are now based in Turkey. I choose to study activists in Turkey as it hosts significant numbers of both populations, has been the site of continued political threat and victimization for exiled activists, and has been home to many of the political initiatives both groups created after their resettlement. By holding the host state constant, I am able to focus on the variation within their home country experiences and post-resettlement conditions.