Conversing Across the Divide: Perspectives on Immigration and Culture

Meeting the Participants

Steve, 64, Canvey Island

Profession: Former underwriter

Political history: Usually Conservative, apart from when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”

Eva, 25, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was six months, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

She: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be open

Steve: She came across as a very intelligent, articulate, nice person

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

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, not just white British, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just disagree that the numbers are so problematic

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I maintain that authorities have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and not living here when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could come here and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to develop green infrastructure

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll require in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on faith

Steve: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, 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 gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

Steve: I think we parted on good terms. We had a embrace at the station

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