member of the Socialist Party since 1986, when his leadership of SOS Racisme ended he was appointed to the party's national hierarchy at the 2003 Congress of Dijon as National Secretary for Social Issues, a post that did not previously exist, despite never having had an elected position. The post was renewed at the Le Mans Congress in 2005. He had responsibility for immigration, the fight against racism, AIDS and drug addiction. He wrote a report on immigration, Une nouvelle politique de l'immigration (2004) ("A new politics of immigration"), called for by the national leadership of the party to define an official line on the subject. His goal was to convince the public that immigration was an essential contribution to France when it was properly controlled and organised. He declared himself in favour of quotas in line with a strategy of codevelopment creating a legal stream of immigration and regulating flows of migrants. This report was distributed by the Socialist Party leadership. Following the Le Mans Congress, faced with a social crisis and questions of national identity, he defended the ideal of a "mixed-blood Republic" (République métissée). According to him, Effectively he believes that the Republic is an idea that cannot remain fixed and that it should lean towards an ideal which "brings together the tradition of all that is best in French history, Republican history, but which also looks to the future, which accepts France's place in the world, which accepts the new generations of French people, which accepts diversity not as a handicap but as a treasure". In his report on drug addiction, Cannabis : contrôler l'usage pour protéger les citoyens (2006) ("Cannabis: Controlling usage to protect citizens"), Malek Boutih advocates taking public control of the market so as to combat the mafia, cannabis being, according to him, "the cornerstone of ghettoisation and insecurity in working-class neighbourhoods". This idea was taken into the platform of the Socialist Party in 2007 in the form of "public regulation". Close to Julien Dray, also a former member of SOS Racisme, he supported Ségolène Royal as Socialist Party candidate in the 2007 French Presidential election. The new President, Nicolas Sarkozy, asked him to join his government, which he refused to do, affirming that there was no question of him "taking responsibilities in this government", all the while underlining "the reciprocal respect" which characterised his relationship with Nicolas Sarkozy. He was not reappointed