ONLINE: Africa at Noon

UW African Studies lecture series: "Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa,” by Robtel Neajai Pailey, via Zoom. Free.

media release: A weekly Wednes­day event since 1973. Fall 2020 semester will take place via Zoom. Please click the link below to join the webinar:

https://uwmadison.zoom.us/j/97624151198

Or iPhone one-tap :

US: +13017158592,,97892921030# or +13126266799,,97892921030#

Or Telephone: Dial(for higher quality, dial a number based on your current location):

US: +1 301 715 8592 or +1 312 626 6799 or +1 929 205 6099 or +1 346 248 7799 or +1 669 900 6833 or +1 253 215 8782

Webinar ID: 978 9292 1030

International numbers available: https://uwmadison.zoom.us/u/adBMJaQm7l

This series is free and open to the public.

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. For more information about the book, visit https://bit.ly/30RsW3u and watch this video produced by the LSE Department of Social Policy.

BIO

Robtel Neajai Pailey is Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. 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. Robtel’s current 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 constitutional clauses barring non-blacks from obtaining citizenship in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Personal website: https://www.robtelneajaipailey.com/

Twitter: @RobtelNeajai