Conversing Across the Gap: Viewpoints on Immigration and Society
Meeting the Participants
Steve, 64, Essex
Occupation: Retired insurance professional
Voting record: Typically Tory, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the Social Democratic Party
Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”
Eva, 25, London
Profession: Psychology graduate
Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties
Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat
For starters
She: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be receptive
He: She came across as a very intelligent, articulate, pleasant person
Eva: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good
The big beef
She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are so problematic
He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, on technology
She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin
Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues
Sharing plate
He: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits soared after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop green infrastructure
Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll need in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and water power
Dessert topics
She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on religion
He: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I look like a foreigner. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?
Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit racist, or xenophobic
Conclusion
He: I think we parted on good terms. We had a embrace at the train stop
She: We both said that we’d had a lovely time
