Dining Across the Divide: Perspectives on Migration and Culture

Introducing the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired underwriter

Political history: Usually Tory, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His focus 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 opened the weapon systems”

Eva, twenty-five, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be on a boat

For starters

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

He: She came across as a very intelligent, articulate, 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 certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white white British, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on child support, on education, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their oil and gas profits soared after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. 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 rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

He: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. 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 gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. 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 theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or xenophobic

Takeaway

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

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