Jacob Bruel | Global Migration Processes

Jacob Bruel

Jacob Bruel is a Master’s student in Geography at Laval University, Quebec. His research focuses on asylum seekers’ irregular entry into Canada from the United States. More specifically, he seeks to understand how migratory policies influence asylum seekers’ decision-making and trajectories. During his last year as an undergraduate student in Geography at the University of Montreal, he created a project called Honor, examining the evolution of Canadian migratory control practices in response to the arrival of autonomous asylum seekers.

Jacob’s research is supervised by Danièle Bélanger (Department of Geography, Laval University, Quebec) and Philippe Bourbeau (Department of Political Science, Laval University, Quebec) with the support of the Canada Research Chair in Global Migration Processes. Finally, Jacob is also working on a research project led by Danièle Bélanger and Charles Fleury (Department of Industrial Relations at Laval University, Quebec) that focuses on the socio-professional insertion of refugees that have arrived in Quebec since 1980.

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.