The Bridge: a Disagreeing Well podcast

Diego Lacheze-Beer 00:02

Hello and welcome to the second series of The Bridge: A Disagreeing Well Podcast from University College London and Students' Union UCL that tackles hotly debated issues and provides us with tools and techniques to help us disagree about them better. I'm Diego Lacheze-Beer UCL student and co-producer of The Bridge, and I'm here to find out how we can have conversations that lead to understanding and mutual respect, rather than frustration, friction. Our question for today, does the UK do enough for asylum seekers? Under UK law, an asylum seeker is a person who has left their country of origin and is awaiting a response on a formal application for protection in the UK, claiming a fear of persecution based on immutable cultural or political characteristics. While awaiting decision, which usually takes over a year, asylum seekers may be provided accommodation, health care and a small allowance by the government. The UK asylum system has drawn significant attention, quickly becoming an arena for disagreement over points such as irregular immigration and abuse of the system, versus concerns about dangerously poor accommodation and inhumane deportation policies. Recent changes to the system are set to prioritise temporary protection over permanent residency and reduce spending, however many want more substantial change, but in what way? Joining us to discuss this are Amina Khanom, director of the charity Reset Communities for Refugees.

Amina Khanom 01:42

What you're effectively doing is shifting responsibility onto countries that are already under the greatest strain, and we've seen what happens when that pressure becomes unsustainable.

Diego Lacheze-Beer 01:52

And Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham.

Eric Kaufmann 01:56

People should have a right to asylum, but not a right to settlement. Life is not fair, is some people are born in war torn countries. We have an obligation to keep people safe. I don't think we have an obligation to resettle people in large numbers.

Diego Lacheze-Beer 02:11

We're also joined by our resident, UCL mediator, Dr Melanie Garson. Melanie, are you expecting anything particular from today's session?

Melanie Garson 02:20

Well, Diego, as you pointed out, this is a tough question. You did a really great outline of some of the legal elements. Sometimes that's really where the disagreement can get hung up on or dealing with legal definitions or political definitions in this area. So, I'll be really interested to see how we can move away a little bit from that and get to the substance of the conversation, and perhaps where there may be element for common ground. What about you?

Diego Lacheze-Beer 02:48

I think it's going to be a very, very interesting topic today. Has real implications for individuals and communities and our economy. But it goes beyond this, I think that the asylum system takes a life of its own, sometimes in public discourse, and becomes a vessel for a lot of the paranoia that we experience about immigration, generally, about public finances and about our culture. I think it's an area which can benefit greatly from a focus on disagreeing well so we can cut through all the noise and examine the reality of the asylum system, but also acknowledge and respond to the emotions which are bound up in it and which influence our perception of the system.

Melanie Garson 03:31

Well, let's get our guests in and see what they've got to say.

Diego Lacheze-Beer 03:34

Perfect. Thank you. All right, let's get into the discussion. Amina, we're asking, does the UK do enough for asylum seekers? Can you briefly summarise your position on that?

Amina Khanom 03:44

My direct answer to that would be no. But I would say the UK is also not asking the right question, and as a result, we're not designing the right system. The question isn't simply, does the UK do enough for asylum seekers? It's whether we have an asylum system that is fair, effective, economically sensible and grounded in reality, and at the moment, there's a real gap between perception and what's actually happening on the ground. There's no denying that people feel pressure that's real, on housing, on public services, on the cost of living. Those concerns are valid, but what's happened in the public debate is that those very complex, long-term challenges have been simplified and very often misattributed to people seeking asylum. In reality, people arriving to claim asylum, including those coming by small boats, represent a small part of the overall picture, but they dominate the conversation.

Diego Lacheze-Beer 04:34

Amina, that's really great. Thank you very much for that. Eric, can you do the same thing? Can you summarise your position on our question today?

Eric Kaufmann 04:41

My position here differs, so I would say it is doing enough for people who arrive in the UK. I think it could do more for people in camps and facilities who've sought asylum in other parts of the world. So that's probably where I would prefer to see spending increased. But I think in terms of the UK, I think that it's already being more generous than it should be in terms of people onshore and being processed onshore. In theory, if asylum seekers could work right away, if you had safe and legal routes, yeah, that would be much better. I think where we're likely to disagree is that, in my view, the potential flow is extremely large, and you need to disincentivise people, many of whom are not going to be genuine asylum seekers. And I just think it's not realistic to imagine that people claiming asylum are genuine asylum seekers. Secondly, that they are not looking for societies that they prefer compared to societies that would be safe, but that they don't prefer.

Diego Lacheze-Beer 05:42

Thank you very much, Eric. So, it seems that there's some agreement on the ideals for asylum, and that there is potential to do more for asylum seekers, that there's disagreement over the feasibility and the consequences of that, and what that means for us more widely in society. I'm very much looking forward to this discussion. Melanie, over to you.

Melanie Garson 06:05

Thank you, Diego, and thank you Amina and Eric for your thoughts. Before we go a little further into this conversation, I'd like to just take a minute just to ask, how did you first become engaged with this issue? Amina?

Amina Khanom 06:23

I guess my interest in this field comes from both my personal background, but also my professional grounding. So personally, you know, I'm a I'm a Bangladeshi immigrant. I came here with my family when I was very young. We came and as economic migrants, one of the reasons we left Bangladesh was because of environmental causes. You know, there was horrific environmental disasters. We pretty much lost our home, and that was one of the reasons why we had to kind of leave, but also it was because my family, like many families, just wanted a better life for their children. So that's why we came here, and I remember coming here as a migrant, I remember coming here as someone who spoke no English, trying to sort of integrate into secondary school and really understanding from a very young age the very real problems in our infrastructure, in how we welcome and integrate newcomers into our country. So that's definitely informed why I do the work I do, but the reason I got into my profession, which is more specifically resettlement, also working with those seeking asylum, was because I, like so many, back in 2015 when we all saw the image of that poor young Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi washed up on the beach, and it touched a lot of us. We saw the treacherous journey he and his family were forced into taken because of the civil war in Syria, and I felt like again, with so many people, the pain and the outrage that something like that caused an innocent boy to lose their life, and it made me just want to do something.

Melanie Garson 07:53

Thank you. Eric?

Eric Kaufmann 07:55

Yes, well, I'm a political scientist, I'm interested in the politics of national populism. I'm interested in questions of national identity, which I was raised abroad in Tokyo, and when you're in an international school and everyone's from a different country, you become interested in national identity. So, I come from a mixed ethnic kind of background, so I'm kind of very interested in ethnicity as well. That was kind of the beginnings, loose beginnings of it and the intersection, you know, we are in a period of substantial demographic churn in the world, north south migration since 1990, the population in the West has increased dramatically. These are very important phenomena of our age. So, the intersection between immigration and national identity, which is sort of central to understanding the rise of populism, that's another area of mine that I'm interested in. So, the actual asylum part of it, per se, it's not really a focus so much as the broader question of migration and particularly cultural change within Western countries.

Melanie Garson 08:55

Well, thank you for that. You've identified different strands within this conversation, Amina, what do you feel is the primary element that's missing from the conversation today in relation to is Britain doing too much for asylum seekers?

Amina Khanom 09:15

One of the things that is clearly missing from the conversation is a real grounding in data and evidence, there's a lot of migration perception and not enough migration reality. I mean, Eric sort of touched on it a little bit when he talked about, how do we reduce so called incentives to the UK to stop people from coming here. But that is one of the most common arguments you hear, is that we need to reduce so called pull factors, the idea that if the UK is too generous, we will attract more people to seek asylum here. But the problem is that the evidence for that is actually very weak. So, if, even if you look at academic research, you know research from the University of Warwick has looked specifically at this question, including whether things like the Right to Work Act as a pull factor, and what it finds is that this assumption, and it is an assumption, is widely. embedded in policy but not supported by evidence. In fact, it describes the pull factor thesis as a kind of a policy myth. So, what that tells us is that people's decisions about where to seek asylum are not driven by things like small differences in welfare systems or access to work. They are driven by much more immediate factors, safety, conflict, family connections, language and the roots available to them. And when you look at how these journeys actually happen, that makes sense. People fleeing war or persecution are not sitting down comparing policy packages between countries. They move in stages, often to neighbouring countries first and then decisions are shaped by roots and where they have existing ties and very unfortunately, smugglers. And I think this is where the pull factor argument really starts to fall apart, because the idea that people are paying 1000s of pounds to smugglers risking their lives on dangerous journeys in order to access the UK asylum system, where the weekly allowance is a mere £49 per week, that simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny. That is not a rational economic decision. It tells you very clearly that what is driving these journeys is not the so-called attractiveness of the system, it's the absence of safe alternatives and the urgency of needing protection. And there's also a really important point here about unintended consequences when governments focus on making systems more hostile, restricting rights, limiting access to work, reducing support. The evidence suggests that this doesn't stop people coming, what it does do is increase the role of smugglers, because if you close off safe routes and you don't provide viable alternatives, people don't disappear. They are pushed into more dangerous pathways.

Melanie Garson 11:38

Eric, what do you think is missing from this conversation? Is it data view, or is it something else?

Eric Kaufmann 11:45

I'd like to sort of start by dividing two things, which one is the right to have a refuge from being shot and killed, or your life being at risk, which I very much support for everybody, someone being able to flee violence. I think that's certainly somewhere an area where we agree. I think where we disagree is I don't think that being a refugee gives you a right to settlement in a wealthy country. Now, that doesn't mean that wealthy countries should not settle any asylum seekers, I think they should have some kind of a lottery system where people in camps around the world can apply, and a certain number of people will be taken each year. I think that's a nice thing to do, but I don't think that fleeing a conflict should give you a right to settle in a rich country. And I think, yes, it is true that the research doesn't show that the generosity of the welfare system is the major thing driving people, but certainly the GDP per capita, the wealth of the country is very much a pull factor. So if you know, if we first of all, yes, a lot of the people who are refugees are simply taking refuge in safer parts within a country or in neighbouring countries. So, for example, Syrians and Turkey. But when we get beyond that sort of to the longer distance asylum seeking that is overwhelmingly concentrated on wealthier Western societies. I think that's a big problem, there are 195 countries in the world, almost none of them are at war, you know, if this was distributed globally, I think that would be a different question. But in fact, asylum seekers and very often those who are actually not facing warfare. For example, a lot of central American refugees to the United States, they are overwhelmingly, in my view, economic migrants. One difference I have is I think that people should have a right to asylum, but not a right to settlement. Now, you could say that, that's harsh, these people's lives are going to be in limbo. I agree with that, I mean, in a way, this gets to a problem, which is that life is not fair in a way, and that some people are born in poorer countries, war torn countries. I think we have an obligation to keep people safe. I don't think we have an obligation to resettle people in large numbers. And I think the kind of person that is landing on shore is overwhelmingly male, is someone who has the money to pay for this long trip. If you had more safe and legal routes, I think you would get a flood of people. And we have had evidence in the past, whenever there's a signal the Mariel situation in the US with the Cuban refugee system, you suddenly had a surge, when Angela Merkel made her announcement, she suddenly had a surge. I think you would get an absolute flood, if it came to be known that there were a lot of easy ways to get into Britain, I think you'd get a flood. So, the problem is, I agree that there's a lot of inefficiencies in the system. I think this is partly because of two things - one, it is very difficult to disincentivise and secondly, there are a lot of legal appeal routes, and a lot of you know human rights laws that make it difficult to remove people easily. Deportation is difficult, you know, judges sort of agonise more over these decisions than they probably should. So, yeah, I think that's probably where I stand, but, but I would agree that, look, I mean, our heart goes out to people who are unlucky enough to have been born in countries that are at war. Last thing I'd say is that most refugees in the world are. Settled in camps or in places that are much closer to where the conflict is. I think a lot of the solutions probably need to focus on improving the situation in those kinds of places, rather than trying to settle people in wealthier Western countries.

Melanie Garson 15:16

Thank you for that Eric. Amina, what have you heard from Eric that might resonate a little, perhaps with yourself, or even with some of the people that you speak with, or the policymakers that you talk to that could assist in this problem?

Amina Khanom 15:37

Just to quickly say, you know, the majority of people coming here who seek asylum. Where I disagree with Eric is I don't think it has to do with Britain's GDP, I think it has to do with the fact that data shows that 70% of people coming here on boats are coming from countries that Britain, at one point, had colonized, and therefore there are very clear cultural and family ties between them in those countries, their home countries, and the language, culture, again, family ties in the UK. I think that absolutely has to do with part of it, and another thing you said about Britain resettling large numbers, the reality is that that's not been happening, and for quite some time, UNHCR data is quite clear on that. Where I do agree with you Eric, is funding other countries. So, I think supporting countries that host large numbers of refugees is absolutely critical, and we should be doing more of it. If you look at the global picture, the vast majority of refugees are not coming to the UK or even to Europe. They are being hosted in countries that are geographically closer to conflict, often countries with far fewer resources. So we're talking about countries like Turkey and Lebanon, and Jordan, Iraq. They are supporting millions of people, often over long periods of time and under significant economic and political pressure. So yes, there is a very strong argument, arguing that the UK, which is I believe, the sixth wealthiest country in the world, should be contributing more through humanitarian funding, infrastructure support, education and healthcare provision, because supporting people closer to their home regions can be more stable, more cost effective, and better for long term recovery when conditions allow. But where I think the conversation becomes too simplistic is when that idea is framed as a substitute for offering protection here in the UK, because to me, it's not an either or, it has to be both. The UK is part of an international protection system, and that system only works if responsibility is shared. If wealthier countries say, we'll just fund this elsewhere, what you're effectively doing is shifting responsibility onto countries that are already under the greatest strain, and we've seen what happens when that pressure becomes unsustainable. Living conditions deteriorate, access to work and education becomes limited, and that's often when onward movement begins, not because people want to move further, but because they feel they have no viable future where they are. So ironically, if you don't invest in both sides of the system, regional support and resettlement pathways, you can actually increase the likelihood of further migration, not reduce it.

Melanie Garson 18:06

Thank you for that Amina. Eric, how would you respond to that, in your vision of addressing the asylum seeker question, do you also see it as managing these or balancing both these pathways, or, you know, in an equal way. Or how would you visualize it?

Eric Kaufmann 18:29

Yeah, I mean, I agree with Amina, we need to spend more on facilities nearer to the conflict zone. So there, I think I would definitely agree that's where the resources should be going. When it comes to people who are coming to the UK, that I think countries have a kind of responsibility to be the safest third country if there's a conflict for example, in France, you know, during World War One, I think a million Belgian refugees came to Britain, some huge number of people during the course of the war. So so if you're proximal to the conflict zone, then, yes, you are going to be a place that receives people in large numbers. Authors like Paul Collier have talked about this. There's also greater geographic, greater cultural proximity reasons for that. So, I think that is certainly something that should be expected of countries. But I don't think that the long-distance obligation is there? I mean countries in North America or in Western Europe are very far from these conflict zones. I also disagree with the idea that colonial ties have any relevance to this particular situation. I think that we can have arguments about colonialism and its impact, which historians debate about you can certainly see countries, like Scandinavian countries, for example, that don't have any of this colonial history, the issue is exactly the same. So, I don't think that's actually relevant. We need to offer everybody safety, but we cannot offer them resettlement in a wealthy country. Now, Britain, you say they're the sixth wealthiest country, they're actually, by GDP per capita, they're well down the list, they're not number six. The wealthy countries should contribute more to camps and to facilities closer to the conflict. I don't think they have an obligation to resettle. And I think also we haven't talked as much about this question of how to discern who is a genuine refugee and who isn't. And I just don't believe that that's possible to do by an immigration judge, because people are not necessarily going to be forthcoming. And I think the problem is you just get large numbers of people who come in who are not genuine. Again, I would look to the US situation, where I think that's patently obvious, whereas if you simply had a system of temporary refuge that would discourage those who are not genuine asylum seekers from making claims. And I do think the numbers issue is extremely important. As I mentioned, there's been an increase in north, south migration, which is quite substantial, and this is really roiling the politics of advanced Western societies, and it's causing a lot of division, and I don't think there's a neat integration solution, even if people are managing to get a job, which may be the case more in Britain than in, say, France. I just, I just think these are deep democratic issues, and countries do have a right to determine how many people settle in their country. So I'm agreeing with some issues around we need to fund a proper global asylum system. I just don't think admitting more refugees is something that I would support.

Melanie Garson 21:27

Thank you for that. I'd like to build out a little bit more. Amina, what would be your fear about Eric's approach?

Amina Khanom 21:37

There's obviously quite a lot of components there. And I think firstly, I wouldn't recommend comparing us to sort of Scandinavian countries, like politically, geographically, in terms of migration, we're just very, very different. But going to Eric's point of how you sort of discern genuine refugees versus economic migrants. I think the first thing to say on that is that the idea of drawing a clean, simple line between genuine and non-genuine refugees is obviously not straightforward, in reality, it's quite complex, because that's exactly, precisely what the asylum system is there to do. Every person who claims asylum goes through a legal process where their case is assessed against international criteria based on whether they have a well-founded fear of persecution due to things like conflict and religion or identity, so the mechanism for distinguishing who qualifies for protection already exists. The real issue isn't that we don't have a way to assess claims. It's that our system is too slow and under resourced to do it effectively and fairly. And I would say that the language of genuine refugees can actually be quite harmful as well, because it suggests that large numbers of people are somehow trying to game the system, when in reality, many people are coming from extremely complex situations where the lines are not always clear cut. People may be fleeing a combination of conflict, instability, economic collapse, and those things are often interconnected. So, when we reduce it down to this idea of genuine versus non-genuine, we do risk oversimplifying people's experiences and creating suspicion around people who are seeking protection rather than focusing on getting decisions right. What we should be focusing on is getting faster, more high-quality decisions at the front end, because that's how you create a system that is both fair and controlled. People who need protection get it quickly, and people who may not qualify can be dealt with through the proper processes. At the moment, delays undermine both sides of that.

Melanie Garson 23:28

Thank you for that. Eric, do you have any fears or concerns of the approach that Amina is putting forward in speeding up the system, investing in the mechanisms to address the asylum process?

Eric Kaufmann 23:44

Yeah, I mean, I think I can get on board with investing in trying to sort of reduce backlogs and reduce bureaucracy in the system, so that makes sense to me. These networks are very alert to where the soft spots are, and which are the best places to go to get asylum. I mean, in the US case, for example, just knowing that there's a change of party is a major signal for people smugglers. I mean, I think that just being more realistic about the fact that the world's a very unequal place, the demand is enormous. And if there is any sort of sense that it's easier to get in into a particular place, I think you are going to get a flood of people. And we've seen that in the past. Again, I mentioned the case of Cuba, where there was a signal that the US would be willing to offer asylum, and suddenly 150,000 boats were arriving. I mean, I just think that just a sort of realism about that is important. And also, I think that the consequences of large-scale arrivals for domestic politics, it's simply not something that people want in Western societies, I think there should be refugees admitted for settlement. That's I'm not saying zero, I'm saying there should be a number, a quota each year. But I think we have to acknowledge that the demand is essentially vastly greater than the capacity to admit. The other thing is that the legal system, this idea of deciding who is a genuine refugee, it's one thing to say, there's a process, but it's another thing when, like, if Britain is admitting over 80% of claims, other countries in Europe are admitting much lower shares. I mean, and I fully have sympathy for the refugees, of course. I mean, they are going to want to have a better life. This is going to lead to massaging of stories, not because they're dishonest, just because for genuine reasons, which I think all of us would share. They want to succeed in their claim, and I just don't think it is possible, given that we cannot look into somebody's mind if their passport is destroyed, or if they've said that they're being persecuted for reason, x, y, z, we have no real way of knowing if that is true or not, and I just don't think it's realistic to have a system that is based on mind reading like that. Therefore, one of the reasons I would favour an offshore processing model is because that is more likely to deter those who are not genuinely seeking protection rather than seeking settlement. So again, trying to come back to this difference between seeking protection versus seeking settlement. Protection absolutely, settlement only with a numerical quota each year, I think that is the only way forward. And in fact, there are, as I as I mentioned, there's 195 countries in the world, very few are at war. The long-distance asylum seekers are only going to certain countries in the main, I think there's a reason for that. It's because these countries are more liberal, they are more prosperous. I think that the limits of that have been tested. If we're really concerned about helping refugees, we've got to be putting money into facilities closer to home, into offering temporary protection, but not into permanent settlement.

Melanie Garson 26:51

Thank you for that. I could see both of you are deeply passionate in finding a resolution to this problem. If I can ask you what I would call an on one leg question, so you imagine you're answering it standing on one leg without anything to balance on. What would be your vision for the perfect system here? I'll go to you, Amina.

Amina Khanom 27:10

My perfect vision for the system is one that our government implements safe and regular routes to the extent that we can really see a decrease in people having to make such dangerous journeys, there is a reason the Mediterranean is known as the graveyard of Europe. We do not want people crossing that plot of ocean, it is incredibly dangerous, we do not know how many people have died there. What we want are safe and regular routes, and actually, the data in the UK shows that people in the UK want this as well, if you look at polling even from more in common, there is strong support for safe and regular routes across the political spectrum, so we know it's something that is wanted here.

Melanie Garson 27:47

Thank you. And Eric?

Eric Kaufmann 27:49

I agree with we want to eliminate deaths at sea, we want to have safe and regular routes. And I guess it's the interpretation of what that term means. What I would mean by it is a system where we have offshore processing only sometimes that's not possible, but essentially an offshore processing model with a quota, which is perhaps a lottery based system where people from camps and facilities all over the world, regardless of whether they're young, able bodied men are able to apply, and a certain number of people are taken each year for settlement, but everybody else is is in temporary protection only. I mean, that's kind of the system, and I actually think that is the system that people want. People want to stop people dying at sea, to want to stop incentivizing illegal crossings. But the reality is, they also don't want large numbers, and the reality is given how unequal the world is, and that is a tragedy, and of course, those of us in Western countries are lucky to be from here, I acknowledge that completely, but still, the potential demand is just far, far greater, I think then, then Amina is willing to acknowledge and I think that has to be regulated somehow.

Melanie Garson 29:05

Well, thank you to both of you. That was a super interesting conversation, and in some ways, from the way I see it, Britain's definitely not doing enough for its asylum seekers. There's just different pathways to how they could be doing more, and both Amina and Eric have offered us perspectives of how Britain could be doing that differently. But Diego, it's over to you.

Diego Lacheze-Beer 29:33

Yeah, thank you, Melanie, and Amina and Eric thank you very much to you too. I've gotten a really clear sense of both sides of the argument, which is great, because I think disagreement around asylum can often be quite opaque. Amina, a question for you, what will you take away about disagreeing well around this issue?

Amina Khanom 29:52

Good question, my takeaway would be, is about how we approach these conversations. I think too often, you go into discussions about issues like asylum, trying to prove we're right, or trying to win the argument, and I think that can shut down understanding before it even begins. So, what I'd really encourage is approaching these conversations with a sense of curiosity, rather than like full out certainty, being open to listening, to understanding where someone else is coming from, even if you don't ultimately agree, because these are complex issues, and none of us sees the full picture on our own.

Diego Lacheze-Beer 30:25

That's brilliant, thank you very much. Eric, the same question for you, what will you take away about disagreeing well around this issue?

Eric Kaufmann 30:31

Yeah. I mean, I really think, as Amina says, you know, it's important to understand people come from different places. There are different value priorities that people have, I think it's important to be able to have a discussion about a topic like this, particularly in a university setting. And I appreciate that from Amina, there was never any hint that, you know, I'm an awful person for not supporting a sort of more liberal approach, that sort of open dialog is important. Problem is in the elite settings, we'll have maybe a more pro-asylum seeker position, and then the opposition is coming through, you know, more populist media, and it's cruder, and that's kind of the way the debate happens, right? Stigmatizing asylum seekers on the one hand, and then the more elite discussion on the other hand, which has a certain political leaning. So, I think it's very, very important to have these kinds of debates, to be able to articulate these differences, see where the differences are, understand people have different points of view. Take some of the perhaps some of the venom out of these kinds of debates. I think that's pretty important.

Diego Lacheze-Beer 31:37

Well, I'm glad that you found this conversation useful, and we're very happy to provide it for you. Thank you very much Amina and Eric for joining us today.

Eric Kaufmann 31:45

Thank you.

Amina Khanom 31:45

Thank you so much.

Diego Lacheze-Beer 31:54

So Melanie, having taken a moment to reflect on the discussion we've just had, how do you feel the disagreeing went and how did your techniques play out?

Melanie Garson 32:03

Well, thank you, Diego, I thought that this was a really interesting one, in the sense that you have two people that are actually quite strong in wanting to resolve a problem, and they just have different avenues and the way to do it. And I think Amina summed it up quite well, sort of taking that time and space to appreciate, not fixing on your positions and sometimes, for me, disagreeing well, is a little bit about taking back control of your pathway in the conversation, so that that conflict doesn't become inevitable, which is what I really tried to do in today's conversation is a little bit in those opening questions of asking how they came to the position they were in understanding yourself, you have to understand yourself before you can begin to go through a question or to a process that you can disagree well in. But what about you? What did you like about today's conversation and what resonated with you?

Diego Lacheze-Beer 33:03

So, I found their differences very interesting, both in the way that they described their background and motivations, and also in the way that they were talking about the issue itself. Amina had a lived experience coming from Bangladesh and knew what it was like to integrate and knew from the charity perspective, what it was like for asylum seekers to deal with their issues and the system. On the other hand, Eric was coming from political science background and more engaged with wider ideological and political perspectives. I think because of this, it was very, very important that you got them to talk about their fears, both from their perspectives and from what they viewed in the other person's arguments, that they could really understand both themselves and the opposite side. Because this conversation, you know, it's so difficult for people to really get down to the nitty gritty, because they're driven by ideology a lot of the time on asylum and immigration. So, I found that really understanding what people were thinking was particularly important. Thank you to our guests, Amina Khanom and Professor Eric Kaufmann, and to you for listening. We hope you enjoyed the discussion and picked up some tips for disagreeing well. If you have, please let us know how you use them, you can drop us a line at podcasts@ucl.ac.uk. You can find out more about UCL's Disagreeing Well campaign on the UCL website, or follow UCL on LinkedIn, Facebook and BlueSky using #UCLdisagreeingwell. Please do subscribe wherever you receive your podcasts to access earlier and forthcoming episodes. And a final thanks to Students' Union UCL and the UCL Podcast Team, and to Research Podcasts for their production support.