Conversing Over the Gap: Perspectives on Immigration and Society

Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Usually Conservative, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the Social Democratic Party

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

Eva, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her home country, Aotearoa, she supported both progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She seemed like a very intelligent, articulate, nice person

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

Key disagreement

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I maintain that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, 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 explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; 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 brought in; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Common ground

Steve: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

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 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 rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

She: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by 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 that district, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People gaze 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 their own.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe enclave?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

Steve: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the station

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