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Introduction

While Egyptians have expatriated to find work abroad for decades, something different has been going on since 2011: thousands have expatriated for political reasons. Some have left based on a general sense that the political climate had become hazardous for them, while others left because of specific fears due to court convictions, lawsuits, job losses, attacks in the media, or direct physical threats related to their political, journalistic, or civil society activities. During the tumult of Egypt’s brief political opening from 2011 to 2013, those opposing the rising prominence of Islamists were told that if they did not like it, they should go to Canada or the United States; and then after the military coup in 2013, Islamists were told that if they did not like it, they should go to Qatar or Turkey.

In contrast to waves of politically motivated Egyptian migration into exile in the 1950s–1970s, migrants now have highly diverse identities, motives, destinations, and experiences in exile. While specific data are hard to locate, post-2011 Egyptian exiles generally appear to be more numerous, younger, and more highly educated than those of the past. One reason for this diversity is that far more groups are at serious risk in Egypt—Islamists as well as Christians, liberals as well as leftists, artists as well as businesspeople, prominent intellectuals as well as scrappy activists—compared to the past, when fewer groups faced political or social persecution at any given time.

Anecdotal evidence suggests there have been three overlapping waves of Egyptians going into exile since 2011:

• small numbers of pro-regime businesspeople and larger numbers of Christians who left beginning in 2011;
• large numbers of Muslim Brothers and other Islamists who began leaving in mid-2013; and
• moderate numbers of secular intellectuals and activists who left as the crackdown against them escalated from 2014 onward.

Mapping the current phenomenon of Egyptians in political exile is challenging for many reasons; many exiles fear for their safety and do not stand up to be counted, while at the same time the Egyptian government does not advertise the fact that so many of its citizens are voting with their feet. What is clear, however, is that there are thousands of Egyptians in political exile and that some of their activities—particularly in mass media and human rights advocacy—worry the Egyptian government because of the potential impact on domestic public opinion as well as international views.

Who Left Beginning in 2011—and Why

After the forced removal of president Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011, former ministers and officials from his regime fled either to Western countries or to Gulf countries, such as Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, that rejected his fall. These former Mubarak higher-ups had varying motivations for leaving Egypt: they wanted to preempt any possible restrictions on their freedom of movement, and some (such as former ministers Youssef Boutros Ghali and Rasheed Mohammed Rasheed) feared legal prosecution as well as political instability.

During Egypt’s short-lived democratic experiment from 2011 to 2013, the country witnessed the rise of political Islamist groups, most prominent among them the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi movement. In reaction to this phenomenon, increasing numbers of middle and upper class Egyptian Coptic Christians (Copts make up roughly 10 percent of the country’s population of 97 million) sought ways to migrate to North America, Europe, and Australia, fearing the fallout from Islamist political rule. In 2013, the German ambassador in Cairo confirmed to one of the authors of this paper that Christian Egyptians’ applications for asylum in Germany tripled between 2011 and 2013.

Salafi movements, particularly the Salafi Dawa Movement and the associated Noor Party, engaged in discriminatory speech against the Copts, denying they had equal citizenship rights. These parties exploited their presence in constitutional and legislative bodies to introduce greater religiosity into the state, politics, and public space. Repeated sectarian attacks—for example, the Atfih and Imbaba church attacks in 2011 as well as sectarian attacks in Upper Egypt in 2012 and 2013—also added to the Copts’ fears and, along with the general deterioration of economic and security conditions, pushed some of them to submit applications for immigration to and asylum in the West.

The Muslim Brotherhood did nothing to allay such fears. The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party formed the largest bloc in the parliament elected in late 2011, as well as in the bodies entrusted with either amending the constitution or drafting a new one. The group’s candidate, Mohamed Morsi, was elected president in June 2012. Brotherhood representatives in legislative and constitutional bodies repeatedly refused to guarantee political and civil rights for Copts. Moreover, then president Morsi did not visit any churches for holiday celebrations or funerals during his year in office (June 2012–July 2013). To the Coptic population, the political dominance of the Muslim Brotherhood, combined with its failure to adopt explicit political speech and practices committed to equal citizenship rights between Muslim and Christian Egyptians, amplified and justified fears of severe repercussions for their community.

Post-2013 Exiles

In the summer of 2013, the Egyptian military took control of the country amid popular demonstrations against Morsi. The military imprisoned Morsi and top leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the Freedom and Justice Party and ended the nascent democratic transition. The Egyptian authorities used unprecedented force to break up several sit-ins organized by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, notably in Rabaa Square in Cairo, in which more than 800 people were killed on August 14, 2013.

The interference of the military in politics and the violent dispersal of the sit-ins were followed by large-scale repressive and punitive measures against Brotherhood members and supporters. Some Brotherhood members and supporters engaged in violent activities; others did not. However, the majority soon found itself robbed of its freedom, facing legal prosecution regardless of involvement in violence, and having its assets confiscated. In December 2013, the Brotherhood was declared a terrorist organization in Egypt, making membership or even support an offense punishable by imprisonment.

In this highly polarized atmosphere, a broader wave of migration of lower-ranking Brotherhood members and supporters of all ages began. The members who fled came from various economic and social backgrounds as well as age groups, and they chose destinations such as Qatar, Turkey, Sudan, North America, Europe, and Asia. This group of politically displaced people is highly diverse socioeconomically, though all of them had some kind of Islamist ideological or political affiliation, and many of them left the country illegally. A few prominent members of the Brotherhood, the Freedom and Justice Party, or the Morsi administration managed to escape prosecution and went into exile.¹

Some of the Salafists, again the Salafi Dawa Movement and Noor Party, turned on their previous alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood and joined forces with those involved in the 2013 upheaval. Many unorganized Salafists withdrew from politics altogether, while others ended up in prison for supporting the Brotherhood in protest demonstrations.

Starting in 2014, Egypt’s new rulers not only persecuted the Brotherhood and its supporters but also harassed young secular activists who called for democracy before and after the January 2011 revolution, subjecting them to harsh new laws and legal amendments passed in a hurry to remove citizens from public life. Military, security, and judicial authorities also turned their attention to the small minority of liberal and leftist writers as well as intellectuals who opposed the military takeover in 2013 and condemned the violent crackdowns on Islamist sit-ins (as well as the violence by some Brotherhood members and supporters). They faced lawsuits on trumped-up charges and/or other measures to deprive them of freedom to travel or to earn a living. Later on, the regime even targeted secular activists who had initially supported the military’s takeover of power in 2013 but later became critical of the spreading repression.

Thus new groups joined the post-2013 wave of politically motivated emigration from Egypt. Young activists, writers, intellectuals, artists, and journalists decided to seek exile elsewhere, mostly heading for European capitals, such as London and Berlin, as well as Canada and the United States. The government crackdown on civil society organizations, particularly human rights groups, continued to escalate. Groups in Europe and the United States began to receive many more requests for emergency assistance to at-risk human rights defenders from 2016 onward.² Other members of the wealthy and educated classes, while not subject to direct repression, found the post-2013 atmosphere uncongenial and sought opportunities to study or work in North America or Europe.

Current Migration in the Context of Previous Waves

Many more migrants have left Egypt than in previous waves of politically motivated migration, and they are much more diverse in both identity and motivation for departure.

Before the end of Egypt’s monarchy and the evacuation of British troops in the 1950s, large-scale migration was not reported. Some leaders of the nationalist movement were forced into exile while others knocked on Europe’s doors to earn international sympathy for the “Egyptian question”—that is, the demand for independence. For example, in the late nineteenth century, Ahmed ‘Urabi was exiled to Sri Lanka after leading a nationalist movement against British colonial forces. In the early twentieth century, Mustafa Kamel and Mohamed Farid spent years in Europe calling for Egypt’s independence. In 1919, British colonial authorities exiled Saad Zaghlul and other nationalist leaders to Malta because they had demanded to represent Egypt at the Versailles Conference, which was attended by the countries victorious in World War I.

Waves of politically motivated Egyptian emigration grew larger after a tumultuous period in the 1950s that included the abolition of the monarchy, the declaration of the republic, the evacuation of British forces from Egypt, and the Egyptian army’s seizure of power. In addition to the emigration of members of the royal family, the 1950s saw the exodus of the vast majority of Egyptian Jews, victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the wars of 1948 and 1956. Egypt’s new rulers did not differentiate between the few Egyptian Jews who sympathized with the Zionist movement and supported the foundation of Israel, and the vast majority who considered Egypt their home and did not wish to leave. After deportation, the latter did not resettle in Israel, but rather sought exile in Europe and North America.

Moreover, as then president Gamal Abdel Nasser began to implement nationalist and socialist policies, Egypt abandoned large industrial and commercial families, as well as some influential landowners, after the government placed their property under government control, or seized it to make it public property. Wealthy Egyptians also sought exile in Europe and America. In addition to all of this, the Egyptian state under Nasser sent large numbers of teachers, judges, and bureaucrats abroad to help build state structures in Arab countries and beyond.

Leaders and members of the Muslim Brotherhood fled Egypt from the late 1950s until the end of the 1960s. An attempted assassination of Nasser by members of the Brotherhood in 1954 unleashed a wave of state repression against the movement. That repression, which consisted of far-reaching measures to imprison, prosecute, and even execute Brotherhood members, even pushed Brotherhood members who had evaded attention from security and intelligence agents to leave Egypt. Most went to Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, while a few went to Europe.

At the same time, many Egyptian communists faced repression from the military rulers and were left with no room for public action, either in government-controlled labor movements and trade unions or in political parties, which were outlawed by the Nasser regime. Beginning in the 1960s, Egyptian communists left for various destinations. Many Egyptian communist writers and journalists settled in Lebanon, Kuwait, Algeria, Britain, France, and Switzerland. Those with more academic experience, such as in economics and social studies, settled in the Soviet Union, East Germany, and other Socialist bloc countries. In the 1990s, one of the authors of this study had a rare opportunity to learn the biographies of a few Egyptian communists who settled in East Germany and later became citizens of unified Germany. They shared their stories of state repression and persecution of communists under Nasser, which motivated their departure from Egypt.

After the death of Nasser and Anwar Sadat’s rise to power in 1970, a new wave of politically motivated Egyptian emigration began. From 1970 and 1973, Egyptian Copts became victims of sectarian attacks, the most severe of which were the Khanka events in 1972. Accordingly, the number of Copts seeking to leave Egypt increased dramatically.

After 1973, Sadat began to reverse the socialist policies introduced by Nasser and embraced economic liberalism. In the foreign policy sphere, Sadat moved away from Egypt’s alliance with the Soviet Union and the Socialist bloc, pursued a peace treaty with Israel, and built a cooperative relationship with the United States. To destroy the legacy of Nasser’s socialist experiment and to limit the influence of Nasserists and leftists, Sadat excluded Nasserist and leftist leaders from many official positions, some of whom had already been excluded in the so-called correction revolution in 1971. Sadat also waged war against intellectuals, writers, journalists, artists, and student activists who were known to hold leftist views and criticize Sadat’s policies. At the same time, state and security bodies allowed political Islam to return to universities and other arenas of public space in an effort to counter the Nasserists and leftists.

This led to the emergence of two phenomena: the return to Egypt of leaders and members of the Muslim Brotherhood who had previously left, and a mass exodus of Nasserites and leftists to live in exile in Arab and European countries. Many intellectuals, writers, and journalists left Egypt for the Gulf countries, Iraq, Lebanon, and Libya. While in exile, a number of these emigrants worked for state-owned and private media companies, some of which adopted anti-Sadat policies, especially after his visit to Jerusalem in 1977 and his initiation of peace negotiations with Israel that year in the Camp David accords and the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Some leftist intellectuals, writers, and journalists left for Britain, France, and Switzerland, and some successfully joined the Arab media and journalism scene in exile, with journalist Mahmoud al-Saadani’s work in the Gulf and in London serving as an example. Others, such as the novelist Bahaa Taher in Switzerland, were able to produce literature in unrestricted environments. At the same time, many Egyptians emigrated for economic reasons, seeking employment related to the oil boom in the Gulf and Libya.

With the assassination of Sadat in 1981 and the elevation of Hosni Mubarak, the volatility of Egyptian policies gradually subsided. While Mubarak’s successive governments did not return Nasserites and leftists to power, the majority of them were able to return to Egypt after opposing Sadat’s policies and practices. Some were allowed to resume work at public press and media institutions in a gesture of goodwill from Mubarak. In the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, Mubarak continued to allow the return of Islamists from exile, especially with the expansion of political Islam in public life in unions, civil society organizations, and economic activity, even permitting them to compete in parliamentary elections. In addition, despite the armed conflict between state security forces and Islamist extremist groups—Islamic Jihad and al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya—in the 1990s, members of these groups who were not imprisoned did not attempt to flee abroad, except for a few important cases such as Ayman al-Zawahiri and other Egyptian jihadists who became active in al-Qaeda. Between 1981 and 2011, politically motivated emigration from Egypt was limited to the Copts, some of whom continued to move abroad due to sectarian violence and discrimination.

Where Exiles Have Gone

While specific data on how many Egyptians have left and where they have gone is scarce, there is quantitative and anecdotal evidence of significant increases in emigration since 2011 and particularly since 2013. In a general sense, it appears that Egyptian exiles with Islamist back