Zakaria
Sajir

Zakaria Sajir is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Communication at the University of Salamanca, specialising in migration, structural discrimination and the governance of religious and ethnic diversity. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Leicester (2018), a Master’s degree in European and International Studies from the University of Trento and a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the University of Milano-Bicocca, together with additional postgraduate training at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Before joining the University of Salamanca, he was a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Economics, Geography and Demography (IEGD) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Madrid. He is a member of the research group “Labour Market, Migration and Health” (M2S) at the University of Salamanca and is affiliated with the University Institute for the Sciences of Religions (IUCR) and the Analysis Group on Islam and Arab–Islamic Cultures in Transnational Contexts (GRAIS) at the Complutense University of Madrid. Since 2025 he has served as Secretary of the Research Committee on Sociology of Religion of the Spanish Federation of Sociology (FES). His research focuses on contemporary processes of migration, labour exploitation and structural discrimination, as well as on the governance of religious and ethnic diversity in Europe, with particular attention to Islamophobia, securitisation and postsecular and postcolonial approaches to diversity. He has published in journals such as the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (JEMS), Critical Social Policy (CSP), International Journal of Communication (IJOC), Religions and Revista Internacional de Sociología (RIS), among others, and is co-editor and co-author of the volume Religious Diversity in Post-Secular Societies: Conceptual Foundations, Public Management and Upcoming Prospects (Springer, 2025). He has taken part in various competitive international research projects funded by bodies such as the British Academy, the Ford Foundation, the ESRC and KAICIID, and has contributed to the COST Action ETHMIGSURVEYDATA, within which his work on the registry of surveys on ethnic and migrant minorities received the “Open Science – Open Data” award from the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research (2022). In addition to his academic work, he collaborates regularly with public institutions and civil society organisations.