Conversing Over the Gap: Perspectives on Migration and Society

Meeting the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Former underwriter

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

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, twenty-five, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

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

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

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

He: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been service industry, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship 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 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 soared after the conflict began, 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 go about things. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll require in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

Steve: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. 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 “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

She: I feel like followers of Islam 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 hug at the train stop

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