{"podcast":{"title":"New Books in Sociology","slug":"new-books-in-sociology-671620","podcast_index_feed_id":671620,"rss_url":"https://feeds.simplecast.com/v2qTvjo5","website_url":"https://newbooksnetwork.com","image_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/e2f45575-aa64-469b-823c-25f04d775e35/5b19178e-705b-42a9-8667-20cf6fa413a9/3000x3000/b6e67e348fe6c83f677a9dc9bd7ac1fe.png?aid=rss_feed","author":"New Books Network","episode_count":600,"summary":"This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology","last_synced_at":"2026-09-19T12:22:01.061961+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-sociology-671620"},"episode":{"title":"Bordering On Indifference: Immigration Agents Negotiating Race and Morality","slug":"bordering-on-indifference-immigration-agents-negotiating-race-and-morality","published_at":"2026-08-13T08:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-sociology-671620/bordering-on-indifference-immigration-agents-negotiating-race-and-morality","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-sociology-671620","url":"https://newbooksnetwork.com","audio_url":"https://injector.simplecastaudio.com/e2f45575-aa64-469b-823c-25f04d775e35/episodes/bc2d00b3-790d-4ca8-af39-278ad53e45df/audio/128/default.mp3?aid=rss_feed&awCollectionId=e2f45575-aa64-469b-823c-25f04d775e35&awEpisodeId=bc2d00b3-790d-4ca8-af39-278ad53e45df&feed=v2qTvjo5","summary":"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: Immigration Agents Negotiating Race and Morality (Princeton UP, 2025), Dr. 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—Dr. 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.Dr. 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, Dr. 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. Guest: Dr. Irene I. Vega is associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine. She studies how the United States regulates international migr…","meta_description":"Immigration agents have a frontline view of the racial, economic, and legal inequalities that undocumented migration reflects—and yet most agents do not t…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2989,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-in-sociology-671620/episodes/bordering-on-indifference-immigration-agents-negotiating-race-and-morality/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-sociology-671620/bordering-on-indifference-immigration-agents-negotiating-race-and-morality.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}