French President Emmanuel Macron has appointed a new minister of housing and cities, weeks after nationwide riots brought the country's race and equality issues to the surface.
Sabrina Agresti-Roubache, 47, a former television producer of Algerian descent who grew up in one of France's poorest neighbourhoods, will take on the role of supporting equality and integration in the country's marginalised suburbs.
Mr Macron announced a government reshuffle on Thursday, replacing the government’s education and health ministers, among others, with appointees from his own party.
His government has been under fire since the unrest earlier this month, which followed the police killing of a teenager during a traffic stop.
“We will need to find profound answers to the riots,” he told his government on Friday.
Ms Agresti-Roubache is one of few French ministers to have grown up in France’s “banlieues” in the housing estate of Felix-Pyat in Marseille. She has described herself as a “member of civil society” who became involved in politics later in life.
The former television and music professional was one of the producers of the Netflix political drama Marseille. She has also worked closely with Akhenaton, rapper of French group IAM, whom she grew up with.
She will replace Olivier Klein, a member of France’s centre-left Socialist Party, who drew criticism for his timid handling of the riots – notably for his refusal to comment on a far-right fundraiser for the policeman who killed the teenager Nahel M.
In her new role, Ms Agresti-Roubache will also inherit a housing crisis, which has led to a drop in the construction of new buildings and soaring interest rates.
Ms Agresti-Roubache has garnered media attention for her rapid rise in French politics and her friendship with Brigitte Macron, the President’s wife, whom she met in 2017. She was elected to represent Bouche du Rhone's 1st constituency in 2022, as a member of Mr Macron's Renaissance Party.
Her liberal outlook is marked by strong French patriotism. She has expressed support for policies that would lead to undocumented migrants becoming legal members of the workforce to make up for labour shortages.
Yet she has also said that undocumented migrants who commit crimes should face deportation.
“If you’re undocumented and you commit a crime you must go. People have a catastrophic view of immigration because we have never said that those who could not stay [in France] had to go,” she told BFMTV in May this year.
She described France as a “country of opportunities” in her 2022 memoir La France Je La Kiffe! (France, I Love It!), which traces her entry into politics. She believes that migrants should work hard and integrate, often citing her parents as inspiration and crediting them for the successes in her career.
The new minister went into self-imposed exile following the presidential election is 2002, when Jean-Marie Le Pen, the former leader of French far-right party National Front, made it to the run-off elections. She lived in Morocco for three years, but told French TV in March that she would not “abandon ship” in the future.
Yet her rapid rise remains elusive for the majority of French citizens from migrant or marginalised background.
The July unrest highlighted the entrenched inequalities faced by France’s migrant communities. Twenty-eight per cent of recent French immigrants are now in the lowest tenth of earners, compared to only 8 per cent of non-immigrants, according to analysis by The Financial Times.
Police violence is also markedly more common in France than in Britain of Germany, with Arab people in the country almost eight times as likely to be stopped by police than a white person, the analysis found.
Ms Agresti-Roubache’s proximity to power has also made her a target of criticism in a climate that is increasingly geared against France’s political establishment.
In a heated debate with Republican Sarah Boualem ahead of the elections for the Bouches du Rhone's 1st constituency in 2021, she was accused putting her political ambitions above the needs of her constituents.
“I’m not here to become minister, like Mrs Agresti-Roubache. I don’t deny where I came from, and my friends of today are those of tomorrow,” said Ms Boualem.
France riots - in pictures
