Dining Over the Divide: Perspectives on Immigration and Culture

Introducing the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired insurance professional

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

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

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

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

Initial impressions

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

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

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

The big beef

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just don’t think the numbers are that bad

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

He: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

He: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. 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 the conflict began, they used that money to build green infrastructure

Eva: 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 coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on faith

Steve: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street 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 Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe enclave?

She: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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