Bordering on Indifference - by Irene I Vega (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

How a largely Latino/a workforce of immigration agents reconciles the moral ambiguities of its work

Immigration agents have a frontline view of the racial, economic, and legal inequalities that undocumented migration reflects--and yet most agents do not think of the role their jobs play in those inequalities. Instead, they consider themselves law enforcers, trained to confine their work strictly to crime control and security. In Bordering on Indifference, Irene Vega offers an original, detailed analysis of the rationales that shape how U.S. immigration agents understand and carry out their professional responsibilities. Drawing on interviews with ninety immigration agents--Border Patrol Agents and ICE Deportation Officers, most of whom are Mexican Americans from the region around the border--Vega examines why they took the job and how their training and socialization shape the ways that they grapple with the racial and moral issues raised by their work.

Vega shows that indifference is the bureaucratic resource that allows agents to look away from the most morally ambiguous aspects of their work and helps them cultivate legitimacy for their employer. She traces the development of the agents' "moral economy"--the configuration of norms, values, and sensibilities that undergirds how they perform their work. She also shows how the immigration system benefits from minoritized bureaucrats' labor. With Bordering on Indifference, Vega opens the closed doors of nondescript government buildings and goes into remote areas of the Southwestern borderlands to uncover the hidden normative world that immigration enforcement agents inhabit.

Review Quotes

"Honorable Mention for the Distinguished Scholarly Book Award, American Sociological Association"

"Winner of the Silver Medal in Current Events, Independent Publishers Book Awards"

"Winner of the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Distinguished Book Award, Crime, Law and Deviance Section of the American Sociological Association"

"Winner of the Latina/o Distinguished Contributions to Scholarship Book Award, Latina/o Section of the American Sociological Association"

"Winner of the Thomas and Znaniecki Best Book Award, International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association"

"Groundbreaking. . . . Bordering on Indifference illustrates the costs of empowering foot soldiers to manage a mostly non-threatening and compliant population of migrants with only a narrow skill set grounded in the use of force. . . . [and] sheds important light on the machinery of our immigration system."---Stephen Lee, Columbia Law Review

"I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the inner workings of immigration bureaucracies and how institutional indifference and exclusion are produced at the everyday level."---Nicole Marie Ostrand, Ethnic and Racial Studies

"Bordering on Indifference is a must-read."---Daniel E. Martínez, Social Forces

"[Bordering on Indifference] does an excellent job in showing the reader how immigration agents, both Border Patrol agents and ICE officers, contend with the morality of their job using indifference. . . . I found the book eye-opening and informative in understanding how agents grapple with family separation and racial tensions."-- "My Undocumented Life"

"Engaging, original, and well-documented."-- "Choice"

"Vega has made an important contribution to the literature relating to control of the border. . . . Her interviews with agents, how they got where they are and how they feel about their work, opens up a generally ignored aspect of the story."---Christine Graf, Interlib

About the Author

Irene I. Vega is associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine.