Dining Over the Gap: Viewpoints on Immigration and Society

Introducing the Participants

Stephen, 64, Essex

Profession: Former insurance professional

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

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Evie, 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 worked as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

She: Steve seemed focused on enjoying the meal, to be open

He: She seemed like a very bright, articulate, pleasant person

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the figures are that bad

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits soared after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll need in the future. I kind of agree 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

Eva: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on faith

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street 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 segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe enclave?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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