What’s The Colour of Your Passport?
Nationality, social mobility and life outcomes.
Quick confession: I have an extraordinarily nasty habit and it entails checking the global passport index.
For those who aren’t in the know, the global passport index is the platform on which you are given an idea of the power of the document which allows you to travel freely or not in today’s interconnected and integrated world.
As a man of colour who was born in London in the late 1970s, when the British Nationality Act of 1971 was still in force, my citizenship was automatic, sparing me of the indignities that folks born after the 31st of December 1982 were subjected to, when Margaret Thatcher decided to pander to the prejudices of the natives.
The automaticity of my British citizenship is bookended by my Nigerian citizenship and this dichotomy is worth exploring for a minute.
While I may have been deliberately targeted at airports by overzealous officials at different points, my British passport has given me access to parts of the globe, of which holders of the Nigerian passport can only dream.
Aside from the West African region, where Nigerian citizens can travel freely, the business of venturing to other parts of the continent is just as stressful and demeaning as it is to seek a visa to Europe and the…