Dining Over the Gap: Viewpoints on Immigration and Culture

Meeting the Participants

Stephen, 64, Essex

Profession: Former underwriter

Voting record: Typically Conservative, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the SDP

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She seemed like a very intelligent, well-spoken, nice person

She: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, not just white British, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just disagree that the numbers are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on technology

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could come here and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

He: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, farms. She grasped 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, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits soared after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount 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 advancing to greener solutions, turbine fields 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 note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

Steve: I come from the East End. 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 Chrisp Street 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 “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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