Dining Across the Gap: Viewpoints on Migration and Society

Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, 64, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Conservative, except when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

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

Eva, 25, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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

Initial impressions

She: Steve appeared there to have a nice time, to be receptive

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

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain 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 kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, 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 energy revenues soared after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

She: 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 limited quantity we’ll need 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, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on religion

Steve: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. 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 community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

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

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