The Oxford Handbook of the African Sahel by Leonardo A. Villalón Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 832. $165.00 (hbk).

Abstract

almost disoriented. This is a book perhaps most useful to not start at the beginning and read cover to cover, but to start at the back, with the excellent index, for a more targeted approach. ‘Citizenship in Africa’ is not a book to be enjoyed once and put back on the shelf; it is a book that should be within easy reach time and time again as a vital reference and resource. Indeed, reading these books together is an exercise of complementarity and connection. Both Manby and Pailey bring together rich, detailed data from very different sources to cover an underexplored topic within African politics scholarship, with numerous extensions and directions for future exploration. Yet their scope and scale are often almost oppositional at times. The contrast within their discussions of naturalisation is instructive here. Manby provides numerous examples detailing the variation and often obstacle-ridden naturalisation policies within African countries as well as outlining the relative lack of naturalisation across the continent (–). In her conclusion she argues that naturalisation should be ‘brought in from the arbitrary cold’, with more attention to streamlining and expanding naturalisation policy as an integral part of citizenship policy reform. Contrast this with Pailey’s discussion of naturalisation as ‘betrayer and betrayed’ (–), full of fraught and emotional recountings of diaspora Liberians weighing strategic naturalisation in the so-called Global North (and thus having their Liberian citizenship revoked) as well as often rejecting naturalisation because they did not want to betray Liberia and their fellow citizens. Naturalisation as a policy prescription worthy of reform and attention within one approach; naturalisation as contested and complicated personal and community act of identity and claims-making on the other. Both accounts offer invaluable insights into the nuances and complexities of citizenship policy and lived experience. Together, if explorations of African citizenship are a lens through which to understand how national family histories may be ‘unhappy’ in their own particular ways, Citizenship in Africa and Development, (Dual) Citizenship, and Its Discontents in Africa are incredibly rich kaleidoscopes, offering invaluable, and incredibly different, illuminations of the diversity and ongoing disputes over citizenship and belonging.