Dining Over the Gap: Viewpoints on Migration and Society

Introducing the Individuals

Steve, 64, Essex

Profession: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Conservative, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

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

Interesting fact: 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

For starters

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

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

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

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just don’t think the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I maintain that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, 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 only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. 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 the conflict began, they allocated those funds 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 in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount 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 moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

For afters

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on religion

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: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local 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 “ghetto”. 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 theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the media as doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

Steve: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the station

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