Azouz Begag

Azouz Begag ( born February 5, 1957 in Lyon ) is a French sociologist, economist, writer and researcher at the CNRS. From 2 June 2005 to April 5, 2008 he was Minister with responsibility for the promotion of equal opportunities.

Life

His parents came from Algeria - at that time a colony of France - and emigrated in 1949 in the then French motherland. His childhood was spent Begag in the suburbs of Lyon, the family moved into the Old Lyon Duchère. At the University of Lyon Begag graduated with a PhD in economics and moved shortly thereafter to New York, where he was a visiting professor at Cornell University.

He later expanded its activities as a researcher in the CNRS and since 1980 at the Maison des sciences sociales et humaines: connect from Lyon and as a teacher at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon ( roughly " Institute for Social and Human Sciences ").

In 2004, he was under the patronage of former Prime Minister Jean -Pierre Raffarin and the former Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin, a member of the Conseil économique et social ( Economic and Social Council), until his entry into the government de Villepin in June 2005. He is a Knight of the Ordre national du Mérite and the Legion of Honor.

June 2, 2005 to April 5, 2007 Azouz Begag was Minister with responsibility for the promotion of equal opportunities under Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and had therefore one of the first Frenchmen of North African origin held a government post. This was before when he Minister of the Interior under the Raffarin government was still III, arranged a report on the Police national and "The New France or originating from immigration population."

During this period he saw as his duty to ensure the betterment of special groups without too much practice positive discrimination, ie quota system.

During his tenure as minister, he distanced himself more and more by the then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and openly declared during the campaign for the 2007 presidential election, not to support his candidacy, he threw him in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País, "Muslims and Arabs to offend. " In order to " regain his freedom of speech", he resigned from the government on April 5, 2007. Begag actively participated in the election campaign of center politician François Bayrou in part, who received 18.6% of votes in the first ballot, finally entered for the parliamentary elections on June 10 as a candidate of the newly established party Mouvement démocrate in the third constituency of the Rhône and called after he was defeated in the first round with 14.74% of the vote, to to support in the second round of the socialist Party candidate Jean -Louis Touraine against the conservative Jean -Michel Dubernard.

Since 2002, Azouz Begag is almost every year a guest of the children and youth program of the international literature festival berlin and, in this context before his literary work.

Begag is divorced and has two daughters.

Reported interview in Respect Magazine

In a long conversation with the journalist Marc Cheb Sun and Hélène Ganzmann that in the quarterly Respect Magazine ( No.8, October-December 2005) was published, the Minister expressed particularly, before the riots in France in 2005, to the situation of " young people in the neighborhoods " live ( les jeunes qui habitent dans les quartiers ), and as a reference to " find his impressions in the society ": " [ ... ] it is necessary that Periphérique [ the motorway, which separates Paris from the suburbs, translator's note ] to cross, to go to the locals there, the descendants of Vercingetorix ... [ the white French, translator's note ] This is risky, because you fast one on the snout gets, especially if you have dark skin ... " A little later in the same conversation, he adds to the theme object of awareness with which he was surrounded, added: " If I keep my speech, my sense of civic responsibility, so is it to say to me, ' you have to enter the doors ', and if they refuse to be open, you have to answer it with the pliers. Wherever the diversity does not exist, there must be an invasion of locusts in the competitions of the civil service, in the policy to be national ... everywhere, so you can not go back to the sidelines. The key word of my order is awareness. I have already given the compilation of my Cabinet announced, 'I want a black man, I want someone from the West Indies, a man from Madagascar, I want women, I want the variety '. I have compiled my cabinet according to this diversity; it resembles the France of today. "

Chroniclers have raised criticism of the use of the term " invasion of locusts" by the Minister.