How Parliament is detoxifying the immigration debate
3 min read
Imagine you’re having a conversation about immigration with someone whose views differ from yours. You’re probably not imagining a respectful conversation where you listen to each other, acknowledge nuance and complexity, and find common ground.
But at Demos, we’ve been showing that politicians can have exactly those conversations with the public, and the public with each other.
This year, we’ve been working with the Home Affairs Select Committee to run public deliberation on immigration across the country, and with MPs to trial new ways of engaging with constituents.
Earlier this week, we launched a report for the Home Affairs Committee based on in-person deliberative workshops on work-related immigration we held in March and May with 89 people across the country, in partnership with the House of Commons and King’s College London. Participants reflected each area’s demographics and views on immigration, enabling the Committee to hear from a cross-section of the public, not just the loudest voices.
Over a weekend, participants heard balanced information from experts, discussed the issues, and developed principles to guide the Home Affairs Committee on work-related immigration. The principles demonstrate how much common ground there really is. Within each workshop, as well as hundreds of miles apart, the same principles independently came up again and again.
We set the tone at the outset of the conversations, asking participants to anticipate disagreement, but to handle it respectfully. The room was almost quiet as the conversations happened in small groups. Participants were genuinely listening to each other, not talking over each other. Almost all (92 per cent) felt they had changed their minds over the course of the workshop as a result of hearing others’ views. How often does that happen on social media or on the doorstep?
MPs ’ offices don’t have the same resources as select committees for these conversations. Our new model of MP-constituent engagement recognises that, but our pilots have shown it’s still possible to have better conversations between MPs and constituents, and constituents with each other.
We are currently partway through our latest pilot in Worcester with Tom Collins MP. We brought together a small group of Worcester constituents who hadn’t previously been in touch with their MP over two Saturday afternoons to discuss how immigration impacts the local area, and how constituents and the MP can work together to strengthen Worcester’s community.
The conversation was open and respectful. Almost all (90 per cent) said they thought differently about something as a result of the discussion. And the conversations brought something rare: hope. Ninety-five per cent of participants are optimistic about what will happen as a result of the conversations.
Now the wider Worcester community gets to have its say in a live online conversation using pol.is. Using bridge-based ranking, pol.is does the opposite of social media: the algorithm rewards consensus, rather than division.
Polarisation on immigration is not inevitable. It is a product of the spaces we create for conversations, and those spaces can be designed differently. When they are, the public can find common ground and help create better policy. This changes the way the public sees policymaking, too: people start to understand how complex immigration policy is and value the opportunity to have a say, and, as a result, feel more positively about the decisions made by policymakers.
After taking part in the workshops for the Committee, participants were more likely to feel the government’s immigration policies address concerns they have about immigration (from 24 per cent before to 44 per cent after), and in Worcester, that their MP listens to constituents and makes decisions based on their input (from 40 per cent to 100 per cent).
Better conversations make better policy with more public buy-in. Get in touch if you’re interested in giving conversations like these a go.
Hana Kapetanovic is lead researcher at Demos
