Conversing Over the Divide: Viewpoints on Immigration and Society

Introducing the Participants

Steve, 64, Essex

Profession: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Tory, except when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”

Eva, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her native land, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

She: Steve appeared focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

Steve: She seemed like a very intelligent, well-spoken, nice person

Eva: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that UK residents who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on technology

Eva: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and abroad when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their oil and gas profits soared after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll need in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

Steve: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

Steve: I think we separated amicably. We had a embrace at the station

She: We both said that we’d had a wonderful evening