Hadrien Dubucs

Hadrien Dubucs, geographer and international mobility specialist, advocates for a discipline rooted in reality. A senior lecturer at Sorbonne University and member of the Institute of Global Health, his approach to the geography of migration is particularly sensitive to the authenticity of real-life experience. Through themes ranging from food to globalised trajectories, his research studies ways in which individuals inhabit places and reinvent their lifestyles as they cross borders.

“Geography is the social science you do on your feet,” says Dubucs, who did not initially set out to study the discipline. After his A-levels, he attended literary preparatory classes, then spent two years at Sciences Po Paris. His interest then turned to urban policy. An internship at the Paris City Hall sparked his interest in the subject, but also led him to reconnect with another project: teaching.

He decided to sit the French competitive examination for the high-level teaching qualification (agrégration) in geography. “I had a keen interest in a discipline that I felt was rooted in a factual approach - work involving description, quantification and measuring reality, combined with practical fieldwork.” A theme gradually emerged which would become central to his career: international migration.

4% of the world’s population, and a whole world to explore

As he delved into the topic of migration for his teacher training qualification, Hadrien Dubucs discovered a subject that fascinated him. “Our species is viscerally and structurally sedentary. People on the move account for a mere 4% of the world’s population…A figure that was even higher at the start of the 20th century,” he points out.

In his perspective, studying international mobility sheds light on issues that extend far beyond the field of geography: geopolitics, the environment, social questions…. For several decades, this “extremely stimulating” field of research has been shaped by specialist research centres, scientific networks and a very lively public debate.

When discussing his interest in migration, he acknowledges that he had no personal experience of international migration at the time. But he goes on to reminisce: “That’s not entirely accurate - I spent the first seven years of my life in Morocco.” This early exposure left him with “family and childhood memories” linked to a country to which he remains “very attached.” Although it does not fully account for his career choice, this biographical aspect provides useful retrospective insight.

The Japanese in France: a pioneering field

To qualify as a researcher, Hadrien Dubucs joined the Migrinter Laboratory in Poitiers in 2005 which he describes as “the leading geography laboratory specialising in international migration”. There he completed his master’s degree and PhD thesis on the Japanese population in France. “I chose this subject because it was a good example of so-called ‘privileged’ migration,” he explains: people coming from wealthy countries, with high levels of income and qualifications. What was at the time an emerging theme, fragmented between the economics and sociology of elites, has since “developed and become much more structured.”

For Hadrien Dubucs, international migration is not simply a journey from A to B. He emphasises that “it is a matter of connecting several places, sometimes very far apart, between which people circulate. It deals with questions revolving around information, digital exchanges and financial transfers, which incidentally, represent a major driver of the global economy.”

Cultural Geography and Nutrition

In 2011, Hadrien Dubucs was appointed senior lecturer in geography at Sorbonne University. There he encountered a strong tradition in cultural geography, and particularly in nutritional geography. Yet this subject was already a recurrent theme for him: a frequent motif in everyday practices in which territorial ties are expressed.

This subject was illustrated by an interview he conducted in 2005 with a Japanese musician who had been living in Paris for 25 years. Whilst describing a life far removed from Japan, she began to talk about what she ate and stated that ‘her body is made up of Japanese food, and that she needs it.’ This unexpected encounter with diet proved revelatory for the young researcher. It prompted him to distance himself from the simplistic interpretations that had long prevailed - such as those that, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, led the U.S. authorities, for example, to assess immigrants’ integration through the scrutiny of their dietary practices.

In his view, on the contrary, these practices must be considered in their own right. Dietary habits are influenced by numerous factors – social, economic, length of residence – and are never entirely determined by them. Today, there is “not so much a process of dietary acculturation as there are forms of reinvention - combinations of certain festive occasions rooted in family memory and everyday eating practices, shaped more by social class than by national or religious considerations”, explains the geographer.

Since joining Sorbonne University, he has taught the Master’s programme in Food and Food Cultures, a course open to lecturers from the fields of nutrition, marketing, economics and history. It is a way of studying food ‘from farm to fork’ and of examining dietary practices in all their dimensions.

Five years in Abu Dhabi

In 2016, Hadrien Dubucs chose to move to the United Arab Emirates. Heading the Geography Department at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi, he was involved in a wide range of activities: management, teaching English, organising and facilitating research, and institutional communications... “It was a formative experience, both professionally and on a personal and family level.” He moved to the United Arab Emirates with his wife and their two daughters, where the couple welcomed their third child. “The initial contract was for three years. We stayed for five, finding it a bit of a struggle to leave,” he confides. “We had forged strong friendships, and the encounter with a very different culture enriched our daily lives.”

In a country where 90% of the population consists of foreign nationals, demographic, social, and regional issues provide a remarkable richness. There, he coordinated a research programme on public spaces in Abu Dhabi, aimed at understanding how a socially and nationally diverse society does, or does not, share common spaces. He is now pursuing further research on investment migration.

The Institute of Global Health: the Nutrition Programme

Back in France, Hadrien Dubucs was contacted by the heads of the Institute of Global Health to join the Nutrition research group. Although he has never conducted research specifically focused on health, the concept runs throughout his work: health practices in migration contexts, health as a factor in migration, and medical tourism.

Drawing on his experience in the field of food studies at Sorbonne University and within the Médiations Laboratory, he hopes to help set up a study on food insecurity  among students. This is an issue that lecturers and researchers encounter on a daily basis, and which now occupies a central place in public debate. “The aim is to conduct a robust survey, supported by information and support services for students,” explains the geographer, emphasising the need for precision in the investigation. “We need to document the budget allocated to food, the exact composition of meals, and their weekly organisation.” The objective is to understand practices in full, while also applying the same empirical rigour to the analysis of the more subjective, affective, social or cultural dimensions that shape eating practices.

Intersecting migration and food practices, Hadrien Dubucs’s research develops a form of geography attuned to complexity - one that reveals how individuals carry their habits, tastes, and ways of being, and how these are reinvented along the way. Built through extensive fieldwork, his expertise is now notably mobilised within the Institute of Global Health, where his perspective seeks to cast new light on issues of nutrition, precarity, and public health.