Ariane Bogain (Northumbria University)

Ariane Bogain (Northumbria University)  

Election address 

I would like to represent EU migrant members and fight for their rights as well as for all our future. I am not a member of any political party, and I know that UCU members hold different political views. In voting for me, you would be supporting a candidate who puts the Union and its members first and who will strive to make our Union inclusive, accountable, and put all of you at the heart of decision-making.  

I have worked at Northumbria University since 1997, currently as a lecturer in French and International Relations. After holding various roles in my branch for many years, I am currently a departmental rep and the membership secretary. I was on the NEC between 2016 and 2020, representing women members.  

I have a long experience of collective actions against course closures, including my own, and I have lived through the anxiety of job losses, most recently in 2024 when the Northumbria branch fought off a threat of redundancies. The brutal climate we all face in Higher Education, with a devastating level of job cuts across the sector, requires us to work together to defend our future and reclaim universities as institutions of learning. Meanwhile, Further Education is suffering a recruitment and retention crisis, with unsustainable workload and a widening pay gap compared to schoolteachers. Pressure must be put on the government to achieve pay parity with school staff and address workload through a nationally bargained and binding workload agreement.  

In both sectors, better support for migrant members needs to be put in place. Since Brexit, the hostile environment of the UK immigration policy has made everyday life difficult for all EU citizens. Considering catastrophic precedents such as Windrush, the lack of physical proof of their settled or pre-settled status is a recipe for disaster that causes widespread anxiety as digital systems can be unavailable, hacked and corrupted.  

EU citizens with a pre-settled status must demonstrate a second right to reside to access benefits like Universal Credits, which is proving stressful for our casualised members with a patchy work history. Those newly arrived in the UK are, along with all recent migrants, in a particularly vulnerable position because holders of a skilled visa losing their jobs will see their visas revoked after 60 days unless they can find another form of employment, thereby creating a huge level of anxiety in the current HE context.  

Everyone, including our employers, knows what a contribution migrant colleagues make to our universities. But, when it really counts, only UCU can be trusted to fight to protect migrant colleagues, and I commit myself to ensuring your union does so.  

Please give your number 2 vote to Bruno Ferreira.