Does dual citizenship reproduce inequalities? Robtel Neajai Pailey grapples with this question and more in her award-winning monograph Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa: The Political Economy of Belonging to Liberia (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Hers is the first book to evaluate domestic and diasporic constructions and practices of Liberian citizenship across space and time and their myriad implications for development. In this presentation drawing on rich life histories from over 200 hundred in-depth interviews in West Africa, Europe, and North America, Pailey uses a contested dual citizenship bill, introduced in Liberia in 2008 but never passed, as an entry point to ask broader questions about how citizenship is differentiated by class, gender, race, ethnicity, etc.
She develops a new model for conceptualising citizenship while offering a compelling critique of the neoliberal framing of diasporas and donors as the panacea to post-war reconstruction.