Migrant Trajectories | Global Migration Processes | Chaire

This page contains narrative mapping applications that describe the journey of migrants.

Witnessing exile

A journey following the route taken by migrants through the Balkans

From 2014 to 2016, about 800,000 people—mainly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans—took the Balkan route, hoping to find refuge in Europe, especially in Germany. Described as a “migrant crisis”, this historical migration was above all a human tragedy that left its mark on its many witnesses.

In the summer of 2017, Danièle Bélanger, chairholder of the Chair, followed the route that migrants had taken before European countries closed their borders two years ago.

Photographic contribution

Michel Huneault is a documentary photographer and visual artist. Before devoting himself entirely to photography starting in 2008, he worked for more than ten years in international development. He holds an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a Rotary Peace Fellow, focusing on the role of collective memory in the aftermath of large-scale trauma. First in Berkeley and then in New York, he was a student and assistant to photographer Gilles Peress of the Magnum agency. Today, Michel Huneault is still interested in development, trauma, migration and other complex geographic realities, including the impacts of climate change. In 2016, he was awarded the Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellowship to continue his research on migration issues. In 2018, ROXHAM, his visual and sound project on the passage of asylum seekers from the United States to Canada was adapted into virtual reality by the National Film Board of Canada.