"I've never felt I'm discriminated because I'm Bulgarian," says Dessi Hristova, 34, who lives and works in London.
"I can hear, from time to time, some comments; but I would never say they were really nasty comments. I think it's mostly fear," she says, commenting on the surge of interest in Eastern European migrants to the UK after employment restrictions were lifted last year.
Hristova was born in Gabrovo, a city in the north of Bulgaria. After completing a degree in Politics and European Studies, she spent a year studying at Oxford University as part of an exchange program, where she also met her future husband. She eventually made the move to London in 2011.
Spending many years working with the charity sector in Bulgaria, Hristova started out as a volunteer working for an NGO that fights global corruption.
Aside from fighting injustice, Hristova has also volunteered for the Royal London Society for Blind People (RLSB), motivated by her own father's blindness.
"I'm a sighted guide, so what you do is that you're helping people during social weekends, and you're guiding them, on the tube, or helping at events and outings, music events ... We've taken them to St Paul's, Big Ben ..."
Despite integrating and settling in the UK relatively quickly, there are still moments where she feels like an outsider.
"When I speak, people always ask where my accent's from, and I'm like, is that the most important thing? Especially in a place like London ... If I say I'm British, does it make a difference to you, or not?"
But she refuses to take any political rhetoric against Eastern Europeans and her nation to heart as "if you take it personally, that means that they win, in a way. And also, I don't obsess myself with the comments they say."
Blogging and writing about Bulgarians to try and change some of the prejudice, Hristova believes immigrants should not bear the brunt of the real cause of an economic downfall.
"When there's a crisis and the economy isn't working, we fear every single thing that is going to take your job away or make your life harder and you look for someone to blame. Everyone is free to go somewhere else; there are so many British people in Spain, France, or Bulgaria, even."
"I recommend to anyone to go and live abroad for a bit, [for] two months, six months, just to do something that will scare you. Otherwise you'll never be able to open your eyes and just see how we're all the same. Wherever you go, people are the same."
So, where does Hristova feel she belongs?
"I went to a literary festival ... and there was this author, she's Turkish; Elif Shafak. And she said you always have one foot in one place and another foot in another place and you're looking over, and there's like an abyss in between."