In this interview with Robtel Neajai Pailey, ROAPE asks her about her new book Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa: The Political Economy of Belonging to Liberia. She argues that Liberia today must address historical and contemporary inequalities that have fuelled armed conflict and currently underpin claims against dual citizenship.
ROAPE: Can you please tell us a few things about your work and background?
Robtel Neajai Pailey: I have taken a rather circuitous route to academia. With over 15 years of combined personal and professional experiences in Africa, Europe and North America, I’ve worked across a broad range of fields while supporting governments, media institutions, multilateral, regional, non-governmental and community-based organisations. For example, in my mid-twenties, I served as special assistant for communications to Liberia’s (and Africa’s) first democratically elected female president followed ten years later by a stint in the executive office of the African Development Bank Group as an Ibrahim Leadership Fellow. I am currently Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where I research race, citizenship, ‘South-South’ migration and development cooperation. Much of my life’s work sits at the intersection of scholarship, policy and practice, and is propelled by a deep commitment to social justice and radical storytelling…
