Dining Across the Divide: Perspectives on Migration and Culture

Introducing the Participants

Steve, 64, Essex

Occupation: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Typically Conservative, apart from when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Eva, twenty-five, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She came across as a very bright, well-spoken, pleasant person

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

The big beef

Eva: He was certainly 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 essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – candidates could come here and only be paid 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 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

Steve: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, come off of oil. 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 Ukraine started, they used that money to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll need in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, windfarms and water power

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

He: I hail 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 look like a foreigner. People stare at me because it’s become very Muslim. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

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

Takeaway

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

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