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Alexandra Bulat
CitizenshipRomanian and British
Known forfirst English county councillor of Romanian descent
Political partyLabour
MovementYoung Europeans

Alexandra Bulat is a Romanian-British county councillor of Cambridgeshire. She is the first English county councillor of Romanian background, elected in UK local elections on 6 May 2021.[1] On 4 March 2024, she was announced as Labour's prospective parliamentary candidate for the Huntingdon constituency[2] for the 2024 United Kingdom general election.

Early life

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Mainly raised in Romania, Bulat had spent a year in the UK as a young child while her father worked for the NHS. Returning as a student, she initially had a poor command of English.[3]

Social activism

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Bulat is a Labour Party councillor reprenting Abbey ward on Cambridgeshire County Council. She was elected at the 2021 local elections winning 41.77% of the vote and a majority of 205 despite a 25.76% increase in the Green party votes compared to the previous election.[4]

Dr Bulat also won the University College London's (UCL) Provost Public Engagement ' Find Your Voice' Award in 2020 for public engagement by an early career researcher. She is a leading member of 3million and co-manager of their network for Young Europeans and she volunteers with charity Settled which helps EU people on application for 'settled status', following the UK Brexit arrangements.[5] She was invited to write for the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in 2019,[6] and by Al Jazeera to comment on the freedom of movement arrangements finally agreed for Gibraltar on 31 December 2020.[7] She had previously spoken about incipient racism in Romanian language posters about shoplifting appearing in British supermarkets. And she was invited to speak about her formal analysis of the attitudes to migration identified in campaign policy fliers for the EU Referendum.[8] She was one of the 33 Labour councillors who signed an open letter to The Guardian calling for a confirmatory referendum on Brexit.[9]

As an outspoken advocate of EU citizens rights and a dual British-Romanian citizen, she shared her experiences of racist and xenophobic abuse with The London Economic Review and Labour party events,[10] with her political enquiries into the route to citizenship during the Brexit transition period noted The Independent.[11]

At the closing date in June 2021, for those not yet confirmed to have settled status in the UK, Bulat and others were concerned about the impact of a late surge in awareness and the backlog in applications and a loss of rights.[12] BBC reported that she spelled out basic rights that young Europeans would lose, and said that a 'physical proof of status' is needed to suit some people.[13] Attitudes to migrant workers who previously may have had to take work that could be considered 'low skilled' and the future 'points system' blocking access to the labour markets currently relying on EU migrants was a concern of her research in 2019.[14] In the debate on voter identification for voting in the UK,[15] Bulat and others produced a report on the current and potential impact on under-represented groups in London.[16] As vice-chair of the County Council committee looking at paid family leave, a motion which was then passed, she had said "For me this is a matter of principle and basic rights, especially if we want to improve diversity in local government”.[17]

In March 2024, Bulat was selected by Labour as the Propsective Parliamentary Candidate for Huntingdon for the upcoming General Election.[2] Bulat stood in 2024 General Election on the 4th July 2024 and came second with 16,758 votes, behind the Conservative candidate Ben Obese-Jecty with 18,257.[18]

Education

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Her doctorate was based on research on exploring whether local contact affected attitudes towards EU migrants in 'a comparison of British, Romanian and Polish residents' views in two English local authorities in the context of Brexit'.[19] Her studies included ephemera in the British Library where her case study analysis identified a bias in the materials against migrants from certain EU countries.[20] A recent collaboration on EU citizens’ perceived identity is conducted with Professor Tanja Bueltmann of Strathclyde University.[21] She was later co-author of a study funded by EU Horizon Fund to study the impact of 'growing up abroad' as which compared Italian and more recent Romanian cohorts.[22]

Along with a doctorate from University College London, Bulat also has a Masters degree from Cambridge and an undergraduate degree from the University of Sussex.[3]

Publications

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References

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  1. ^ Zayed, Alya (2021-05-08). "UK's first Romanian county councillor elected in Cambridgeshire". CambridgeshireLive. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  2. ^ a b "Congratulations Alex Bulat, Labour's Parliamentary candidate for Huntingdon!". Twitter. 2024-03-04.
  3. ^ a b "Alexandra Bulat, born in Romania, she has lived in Great Britain for seven years. She is not there to take jobs away from the British but to study them". Nuoveradici.world (in Italian). 2019-04-22. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  4. ^ "Election". elections.cmis.uk.com. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  5. ^ UCL (2020-10-28). "Dr Alexandra Bulat wins a Provost Public Engagement Award 2020". UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES). Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  6. ^ "Bulat, A". National Institute of Economic and Social Research. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  7. ^ Freedom of Movement agreed for Gibraltar - Alexandra Bulat reacts 31.12.2020, 31 December 2020, retrieved 2021-05-12
  8. ^ "Who Said What About EU Migration? – Alexandra Bulat – Conway Hall". conwayhall.org.uk. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  9. ^ Letters (2019-01-09). "Labour should back another referendum | Letter". the Guardian. Retrieved 2021-12-13.
  10. ^ "Party Conferences 2021 – Partner with us". British Future. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  11. ^ "UK should remove barriers to becoming British, report warns". The Independent. 2020-12-10. Archived from the original on 2020-12-10. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  12. ^ "Britain is much more European than anybody thought". The Economist. 2021-07-01. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  13. ^ Peel, Shaun; Rigby, Nic (2021-06-13). "EU settlement: Fears people may miss post-Brexit deadline". BBC News. Retrieved 2021-12-13.
  14. ^ Bulat, Alexandra (May 2019). "'High-Skilled Good, Low-Skilled Bad?' British, Polish and Romanian Attitudes Towards Low-Skilled EU Migration". National Institute Economic Review. 248: R49–R57. doi:10.1177/002795011924800113. ISSN 0027-9501. S2CID 159180786.
  15. ^ Allegretti, Aubrey (2021-07-04). "Millions in UK face disenfranchisement under voter ID plans". the Guardian. Retrieved 2021-12-13.
  16. ^ Hammoud-Gallego, Omar; Lawall, Katharina; McRae, Isabelle; Moise, Raluca; Wanga, Stephanie; Bulat, Alexandra; Pop, Elisabeth (2 December 2021). "London Voices: the journey to full participation | Citizenship & Integration Initiative report funded by Trust for London and the UK Democracy Fund". Trust for London. Retrieved 2021-12-13.
  17. ^ elworthy, john (2021-09-29). "Council says pay decision will affect who wants to seek election". Cambs Times. Retrieved 2021-12-13.
  18. ^ "Huntingdon - General election results 2024". BBC News. Retrieved 2024-07-05.
  19. ^ UCL (2017-07-05). "Alexandra Bulat". UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES). Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  20. ^ "Alexandra Bulat". The British Library. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  21. ^ "Researchers bid to find out how Brexit has affected EU citizens living in the UK". The National. 16 February 2021. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  22. ^ Moroşanu, Laura; Bulat, Alexandra; Mazzilli, Caterina; King, Russell (2019-07-04). "Growing up abroad: Italian and Romanian migrants' partial transitions to adulthood". Ethnic and Racial Studies. 42 (9): 1554–1573. doi:10.1080/01419870.2018.1501505. ISSN 0141-9870. S2CID 149708904.
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