Dining Across the Gap: Viewpoints on Immigration and Society

Meeting the Individuals

Steve, 64, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Tory, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the SDP

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, Aotearoa, she supported both Labour and Green

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She came across as a very intelligent, well-spoken, nice person

She: I had a caprese salad, 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 UK residents who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on schooling, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – candidates could come here and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

He: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, 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 cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

He: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their oil and gas profits soared after the conflict began, they used that money to build eco-friendly systems

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 small amount we’ll require in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

For afters

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – 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 prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

Steve: I hail from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, 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 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 denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat discriminatory, 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