Conversing Over the Divide: Viewpoints on Immigration and Society

Introducing the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Former insurance professional

Political history: Usually Conservative, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and supported the SDP

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, twenty-five, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, Aotearoa, she supported both Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

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

He: She came across as a very bright, well-spoken, pleasant person

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

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that British people who are native to the area, not just white British, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. However I just disagree that the numbers are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I maintain that authorities have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on child support, on education, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

He: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later 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 international colleagues

Common ground

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. 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 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 require in the coming years. I partially concur 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 concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced 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. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local market, I look like a foreigner. 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 poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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