Does dual citizenship reproduce inequalities?

Robtel Neajai Pailey grapples with this question and more in her engaging monograph Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa: The Political Economy of Belonging to Liberia (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Drawing on rich life histories from over two hundred in-depth interviews in West Africa, Europe, and North America, she examines socio-economic change in Liberia, Africa’s first black republic, through the prism of citizenship. Marking how historical policy changes on citizenship and contemporary public discourse on dual citizenship have impacted development policy and practice, Pailey reveals that as Liberia transformed from a country of immigration to one of emigration, so too did the nature of citizenship, thus influencing claims for and against dual citizenship. Her book develops a new model for conceptualising citizenship within the context of crisis-affected states while offering a compelling critique of the neoliberal framing of diasporas and donors as the panacea to post-war reconstruction.

Robtel Neajai Pailey (@RobtelNeajai) is Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy in the Department of Social Policy at LSE. A Liberian scholar-activist working at the intersection of Critical Development Studies, Critical African Studies and Critical Race Studies, she centres her research on how structural transformation is conceived and contested by local, national and transnational actors from ‘crisis’-affected regions of the so-called Global South.

George Klay Kieh, Jr is Dean of the Mickey Leland-Barbara Jordan School of Public Affairs and Professor of Political Science at Texas Southern University. An expert in security, development, democratisation, foreign policy and international cooperation, he is co-editor of Liberia in the Twenty-first Century: Issues and Perspectives and author of the forthcoming book Post-conflict Elections in Liberia.

Bronwen Manby (@BronwenManby) is Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE Human Rights and Guest Teacher on the LSE’s MSc in Human Rights. She is a leading authority on nationality law and statelessness in Africa. Her publications include Citizenship in Africa: The Law of Belonging and Struggles for Citizenship in Africa.

Coretta Phillips is Professor of Criminology and Social Policy in the Department of Social Policy at LSE. Author of the award-winning book The Multicultural Prison, she researches race, ethnicity, crime, criminal justice and social policy. Her current multi-disciplinary project provides the first systematic, comprehensive and historically grounded account of the crime and criminal justice experiences of Gypsies and Travellers in England since the 1960s.

The Department of Social Policy (@LSESocialPolicy) is an internationally recognised centre of research and teaching in social and public policy. From its foundation in 1912 it has carried out cutting edge research on core social problems, and helped to develop policy solutions.