Nineteen students from four of Liberia’s leading universities recently completed a thought-provoking, eight-part intercollegiate seminar exploring one of the most pressing and controversial questions in contemporary Liberian politics: Does dual citizenship reproduce inequalities?
Led by acclaimed scholar and author Dr. Robtel Neajai Pailey, the seminar was based on her award-winning book Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa: The Political Economy of Belonging to Liberia (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
The seminar ran throughout July 2025 and brought together students from the University of Liberia (UL), African Methodist Episcopal University (AMEU), Stella Maris Polytechnic University (SMPU), and United Methodist University (UMU).
Dr. Pailey noted that students from UL, AMEU, SMPU, and UMU were selected from a pool of applicants to participate.
The seminar, which was sponsored by the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), tackled complex themes around identity, migration, national belonging, and development through the lens of Liberia’s long-standing debate over dual citizenship.
Each 90-minute session focused on a chapter of Dr. Pailey’s book and was hosted across the four participating campuses.
The sessions, which encouraged student-led discussions, were rich with insights drawn from Dr. Pailey’s fieldwork, including more than 200 interviews conducted across West Africa, Europe, and North America.
Students engaged with topics such as the legacy of Liberia’s settler-indigenous divide, land ownership struggles, diasporic influence in national policymaking, and the tension between rootedness and rootlessness among transnational citizens.
According to Dr. Pailey, some participating students have sent her glowing testimonials highlighting the seminar’s impact, which she has added in her report to the LSE.
The success of the intercollegiate program has made Dr. Pailey to consider expanding the seminar to include students from other accredited universities in Monrovia and potentially across Liberia in 2026.
She further intimated that the level of engagement with the students was phenomenal. Participants brought curiosity, lived experience, and critical thinking to every session, and Dr. Pailey deemed it a privilege to facilitate those conversations.
As Liberia continues to grapple with a potential dual citizenship amendment and the role of its diaspora in national development, the conversations sparked in this seminar could not be timelier.
By equipping the next generation of thinkers with critical frameworks and insights, Dr. Pailey and the LSE are helping to ensure that the debate over who belongs, and on what terms, is both inclusive, informed, and intellectually productive.
