Dining Across the Divide: Viewpoints on Immigration and Culture

Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Tory, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the SDP

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, the capital

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a long time to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

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

She: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

The big beef

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just disagree that 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 tepid ale. But I believe that authorities have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

He: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, 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 skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour 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 use planes. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

For afters

She: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

Steve: I hail 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: 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 “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

Steve: I think we separated amicably. We had a hug at the station

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