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Does dual citizenship reproduce inequalities?

23 November 2022, 5:00 pm–6:30 pm

Robtel

Join us to hear Dr Robtel Neajai Pailey, Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy at LSE, discuss her recent book 'Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa: The Political Economy of Belonging to Liberia'. This talk will be chaired by IIPP’s Dr Carolina Alves, followed by questions from the audience.

This event is free.

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Free

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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). 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 seminar 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.

This in person event will take place at 11 Montague Street, London, WC1B 5BP.

Read more about the IIPP Research Seminar Series 2022-23

About the Speakers

Dr Robtel Neajai Pailey

Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Robtel Neajai Pailey
Robtel Neajai Pailey is 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 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. More about Dr Robtel Neajai Pailey

Dr Carolina Alves

Associate Professor in Economics at UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose

Carolina specialises in macroeconomics and international political economy, with regional expertise in Latin America. 

Carolina joins IIPP from Girton College at the University of Cambridge where she was the Joan Robinson Research Fellow in Heterodox Economics and a College Teaching Officer at the Faculty of Economics. At Cambridge, she led teaching in macroeconomics, political and social aspects of economics, and history and philosophy of economics, while also being the Director of Studies for Economics for second-year undergrads, and a member of Girton’s College Council responsible for the stewardship of the College.

Carolina is the co-founder of Diversifying and Decolonising Economics – a network of economists working to promote inclusiveness in economics in both the academic content and the field’s institutional structures. She is a member of the Rebuilding Macroeconomics Advisory Group - a research initiative aimed at re-invigorating macroeconomics and bringing it back to the fore as a policy-relevant social science, as well as being the co-editor for the Developing Economics blog, which takes a critical approach to creating discussion and reflection in the field of economics. She is also a board member on the Progressive Economy Forum Council (PEF) and Positive Money.