Karine Geoffrion | Global Migration Processes

Karine Geoffrion

Karine Geoffrion holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Montreal, Quebec. She was a professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, from 2009 to 2012. Her research is divided into two distinct fields of study: 1) gender diversities and sexualities in sub-Saharan Africa (Ghana) in the context of an increased visibility of discourses on homosexuality and 2) intimacies and “mixed” transnational families. Inspired by theoretical perspectives combining gender and mobility, she examined the lived experience of transnational intimate relations and spousal reunification in Canada through an ethnography of North-South couples. In this research, she studies the selection process of a partner and the reconfiguration of intimacies, families, and identities in a context where an individual’s transnational mobility is regulated by larger systems of global inequalities mainly based on nationality, race, and social class. Romantic love and disciplinary regimes related to white Canadian women’s sexuality are central to the analysis.

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.