Conversing Across the Gap: Perspectives on Migration and Society

Introducing the Participants

Steve, 64, Essex

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Conservative, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the SDP

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

For starters

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

Steve: She came across as a very intelligent, articulate, pleasant person

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

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that British people who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the figures are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, 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 fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could come here and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

He: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under the former PM, 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, transition from fossil fuels. 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 oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to build green infrastructure

Eva: 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 limited quantity we’ll need in the coming years. 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

She: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

Steve: 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: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I look like a foreigner. People gaze 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 objects to the term, to her it denotes 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 news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit racist, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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