Irene Vega
  • July 9, 2026

  • UC Irvine sociologist Irene Vega takes home three top prizes, a silver medal and an honorable mention for her first book, Bordering on Indifference

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Irene Vega, UC Irvine sociology associate professor and author of Bordering on Indifference: Immigration Agents Negotiating Race and Morality (Princeton University Press), has been named the recipient of three American Sociological Association book prizes, along with an honorable mention, for her work that explores how a largely Latino/a workforce of immigration agents reconciles the moral ambiguities of its work. The awards include the Thomas and Znaniecki Best Book Award from the International Migration Section; the Ida B Wells-Barnett Distinguished Book Award from the Crime, Law and Deviance Section; and the Latina/o Sociology Distinguished Contributions to Scholarship Book Award from the Latina/o Sociology Section. The honorable mention in the overall ASA Distinguished Scholarship Book Award category placed her work among the top three best books published in the past two years. She has also received a Silver Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, under the category of Current Events II - Social Issues/Humanitarian.

“I am deeply honored to receive these recognitions,” says Vega. “They are a reminder of the enduring value and importance of scrutinizing power in all its forms.”

Released in May 2025, Bordering on Indifference tells the story of how U.S. Border Patrol Agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Officers come into the work, how they are trained and socialized once on the job, and how that training and socialization impacts the way they reconcile its many moral and racial tensions. Findings are based on interviews Vega conducted over a span of two years with ninety immigration enforcement agents from both the U.S. Border Patrol and ICE.

“The main takeaway,” she explains, “is that immigration enforcement is an inherently coercive form of state power that trades in cruelty but is also carried out routinely under the guise of legal and technical rationality. My work shows how that process happens, centering the production and impact of indifference in institutions like the U.S. immigration system.”

Vega joined the UC Irvine faculty in 2019, following completion of a two-year Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society. She earned her Ph.D. in sociology at UCLA. Vega is a past recipient of the Social Science Assistant Professor Research Award and the Dr. Joseph L. White Award for Outstanding Mentorship. Her work has been funded by The Institute for Citizens and Scholars, the Mellon Foundation, the UCI Society of Hellman Fellowship, and the UCDC Presidential Faculty Fellows Program. She teaches courses on immigration, race and ethnicity, and qualitative research methods.  

Learn more about Vega’s award-winning work in our Experts On series. You can also listen in to her recent interview with NPR or watch her interview with Princeton University Press.

 

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