Dining Over the Gap: Perspectives on Immigration and Culture

Introducing the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Former insurance professional

Political history: Typically Tory, apart from when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

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

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She seemed like a very bright, well-spoken, pleasant person

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, not just white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because more and more people are entering. However I just don’t think the numbers are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on child support, on education, on technology

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen 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 receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; since then 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

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, 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 Norway?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll require in the future. 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

For afters

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not 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. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. 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 implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe enclave?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

He: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the train stop

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