Conversing Over the Divide: Viewpoints on Migration and Culture

Meeting the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Usually Tory, except when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have opened the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, Aotearoa, she supported both progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage 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 came across as a very intelligent, articulate, nice person

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white white British, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. However I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on child support, on education, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, farms. She understood 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 different energy source, 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 Norway?” Their energy revenues soared after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. 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 future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and water power

For afters

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

Steve: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street 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 segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – 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 different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

He: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the station

Eva: We both said that we’d had a lovely time