Conversing Across the Divide: Viewpoints on Migration and Society

Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, 64, Essex

Profession: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Conservative, except when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His specialty in insurance was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

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 on a boat

Initial impressions

Eva: Steve appeared there to have a nice time, to be open

He: She seemed like a very bright, well-spoken, nice person

Eva: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

Key disagreement

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think 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 believe that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been service industry, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

He: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. 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 Norway?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to build 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 need in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions 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 gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I look like a foreigner. People stare 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 poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It seems a little bit discriminatory, or xenophobic

Takeaway

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

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