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Join us for our upcoming Faculty Seminar Series with Robtel Neajai Pailey, Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) as she presents her work on Development, (Dual) Citizenship and its Discontents in Africa on Wednesday, 22 February (03:00 pm GST) at The Africa Institute Library (Click here for map).

Abstract

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), which won the 2022 African Politics Conference Group Best Book Award.

This 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 two 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, and whether dual citizenship actually reproduces inequalities. She 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.

Speaker

Robtel Neajai Pailey is an Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). A Liberian scholar-activist working at the intersection of Critical African Studies, Critical Development 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.

Professor Pailey’s current book project, Africa’s ‘Negro’ Republics, examines how slavery, colonialism, and neoliberalism in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, respectively, have shaped the adoption and maintenance of clauses barring non-blacks from obtaining citizenship in Liberia and Sierra Leone. She completed BA degrees in African Studies and English Literature at Howard University, an MSc in African Studies at the University of Oxford, and a Ph.D. in Development Studies at SOAS, University of London.

Moderator

The seminar will be moderated by Amy Niang, Associate Professor of Political Science, The Africa Institute.

 

Through these lectures and workshops, The Africa Institute reaffirms its mission as a center for the study and research of Africa and its diaspora, and its commitment to the training of a new generation of critical thinkers in African and African Diaspora studies.

The seminar will be in English.

The session is free and open to the public. Registration is mandatory, Click here to book your place.

Join us for our upcoming Faculty Seminar Series with Robtel Neajai Pailey, Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) as she presents her work on Development, (Dual) Citizenship and its Discontents in Africa on Wednesday, 22 February (03:00 pm GST) at The Africa Institute Library (Click here for map).

Join us for our upcoming Faculty Seminar Series with Robtel Neajai Pailey, Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) as she presents her work on Development, (Dual) Citizenship and its Discontents in Africa on Wednesday, 22 February (03:00 pm GST) at The Africa Institute Library (Click here for map).

Abstract

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), which won the 2022 African Politics Conference Group Best Book Award.

This 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 two 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, and whether dual citizenship actually reproduces inequalities. She 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.

Speaker

Robtel Neajai Pailey is an Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). A Liberian scholar-activist working at the intersection of Critical African Studies, Critical Development 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.

Professor Pailey’s current book project, Africa’s ‘Negro’ Republics, examines how slavery, colonialism, and neoliberalism in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, respectively, have shaped the adoption and maintenance of clauses barring non-blacks from obtaining citizenship in Liberia and Sierra Leone. She completed BA degrees in African Studies and English Literature at Howard University, an MSc in African Studies at the University of Oxford, and a Ph.D. in Development Studies at SOAS, University of London.

Moderator

The seminar will be moderated by Amy Niang, Associate Professor of Political Science, The Africa Institute.

 

Through these lectures and workshops, The Africa Institute reaffirms its mission as a center for the study and research of Africa and its diaspora, and its commitment to the training of a new generation of critical thinkers in African and African Diaspora studies.

The seminar will be in English.

The session is free and open to the public. Registration is mandatory, Click here to book your place.

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