Conversing Across the Divide: Viewpoints on Immigration and Society

Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, 64, Essex

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

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

Interesting fact: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”

Eva, twenty-five, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

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

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

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have exploited immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on education, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re using their oil. 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 coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

For afters

She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

He: I come from the eastern part of London. 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 that local market, I appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become very Muslim. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat racist, or xenophobic

Conclusion

He: I think we separated amicably. We had a hug at the train stop

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