Conversing Over the Gap: Viewpoints on Migration and Culture

Introducing the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Political history: Typically Conservative, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was half a year, which is a long time to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

He: She seemed like a very intelligent, well-spoken, pleasant person

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

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely 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 more and more people are entering. However I just disagree that the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; 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

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 appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits soared after Ukraine started, 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 supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll require in the future. I kind of agree 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 didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I didn’t think fair. 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 gentrified. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street 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 objects to the term, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

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

Conclusion

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

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