Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa

Abstract

Drawing on rich oral histories from over two hundred in-depth interviews in West Africa, Europe, and North America, Robtel Neajai Pailey 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, she 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. In this engaging contribution to scholarly and policy debates about citizenship as a continuum of inclusion and exclusion, and development as a process of both amelioration and degeneration, Pailey develops a new model for conceptualising citizenship within the context of crisis-affected states. In doing so, she offers a postcolonial critique of the neoliberal framing of diasporas and donors as the panacea to post-war reconstruction.

Demarcating Boundaries: Against the “Humanitarian Embrace”

“…Refugees are, at best, celebrated as "resilient" partners and participants, though their role is often cir-cumscribed by limited powers to actually set agendas, mobilize resources, or meaningfully influence decision-making (Ilcan & Rygiel, 2015;Brankamp, 2018;Turner, 2020). Meanwhile, critical research on migration and aid time again highlights the enduring coloniality, racism, and epistemic erasures of academic practices in studying or "producing knowledge" about people governed through humanitarian administration (Benton, 2016;Chimni, 2009;Pailey, 2020). While alternative methodologies are too numerous to be comprehensively exposed here, I sketch three interrelated "subversive acts of scholarship" (Pailey, 2020, p. 736) that may guide this insurgent work within humanitarian spaces: infiltration, slow scholarship, and accompaniment.…”