Irene I Vega
Biographic Data
| ID | 325047 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Irene I Vega |
| GIVEN NAMES | Irene I |
| FAMILY NAME | Vega |
| SIGNATURE | VEGA I I |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Irvine |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1608-5163 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 63 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Feeding migrants to cultivate a moral self: An analysis of food relief in U.S. and Mexican migration control
Criminal Justice: Maatschappelijk effectieve strafrechtspleging 2023-2029
Bordering on Indifference: Immigration Agents Negotiating Race and Morality
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 Indif…
Strategic coupling and the imperative resilience of Mexican immigrant women in the United States
Fleeting civilities: Narrative accounts from agents and migrants at the US-Mexico border
This paper draws on interviews with Border Patrol agents and Mexican migrants to examine narrative accounts of humanitarian governance—instances where expected control and restriction are replaced with courtesy, humor, or kindness. Our respondents’ narratives cluster around three types of moments of fleeting civility: (a) those where agents and migrants acknowledge the respective roles they play in the US immigration system, often by conceding th…
Colourblindness across borders: The de-racialized logics of Dutch and American border agents
This article illustrates how US Border Patrol agents and Dutch Military and Border Police officers explain racialized border control outcomes, through colourblind ideologies. These ideologies—legalism, criminalization and securitization—function as euphemisms that allow border agents to downplay the importance of immigrants’ race/ethnicity in their decision making and behaviour. Yet, underlying these colourblind ideologies are racialized immigrat…
Reasonable” Force at the U.S.-Mexico Border
While social scientists have studied the relationship between police culture and use of force for decades, federal immigration agents have been left out of these analyses. Addressing this gap is urgent given patterns of excessive force at the militarized U.S.-Mexico border. Drawing on bureaucratic documents and interviews with active Border Patrol agents, this article examines the culture of force within this organization. I show that the Border …
Toward a Cultural Sociology of Immigration Control: A Call for Research
The criminalization of immigration has garnered a great deal of attention in the United States and abroad. Most research, however, examines the political and legal shifts that produced the contemporary system, as well as the implications of these shifts for immigrant communities. The cultural changes that have occurred for frontline immigration agents as an occupational group have not received the scrutiny they deserve. I argue that the control c…
Empathy, morality, and criminality: The legitimation narratives of U.S. Border Patrol agents
Border enforcement is a morally ambiguous and politically contentious state practice. Frontline enforcers experience this contentiousness as a threat to their moral authority. This article draws on interviews with U.S. Border Patrol agents to examine their legitimation work, the justificatory narratives they deploy to establish their moral authority and legitimacy of the system they represent. Agents’ legitimation narratives centre on two strateg…
Mexican Americans and Immigration Attitudes: A Cohort Analysis of Assimilation and Group Consciousness
This study’s motivating premise is that the ideological context around race, ethnicity, and nationhood shapes the immigration politics of Mexican Americans in distinct eras of U.S. history. To examine this proposition we identify two cohorts of Mexican Americans—those who came of age in the World War II era and those who grew up during and after the Civil Rights movement—and examine whether there are systematic differences in how members of these…
Conservative Rationales, Racial Boundaries: A Case Study of Restrictionist Mexican Americans
The 2006 immigration marches have become emblematic of Latinos' united position on immigration. However, solidarity and collective action is only one group formation outcome of sociopolitical exclusion. By ignoring those Latinos who disrupt the tenet of ethnic solidarity against immigration restriction, research has failed to specify the mechanisms that lead some Latinos to depart from their own on a racially bifurcated debate. Drawing on intervi…
Increasing Latina/o Students' Baccalaureate Attainment: A Focus on Retention
Notwithstanding years of retention efforts, graduation rates of Latinas/os remain alarmingly low. The purpose of this review is threefold. First, the authors go beyond traditional theory and highlight those scholars who shed new information on retention for Latina/o students. Second, they summarize factors that specifically affect Latina/o students. Third, promising practices for effectively retaining Latina/o students in higher education institu…
Hispanic Presidents and Chancellors of Institutions of Higher Education in the United States in 2001 and 2006
This manuscript examines the number of Hispanic individuals who serve as presidents or chancellor and the type of institutions they serve. In 2001, only 13 states had institutions in which the president or chancellor was Latina/o. By 2006, that number had increased to 22. Both in 2001 and 2006, 61% of all Latina/o CEOs served in associate's degree institutions. Of the l80 Hispanic-serving institutions in the continental United States that were me…
Empathy, morality, and criminality: The legitimation narratives of U.S. Border Patrol agents
Border enforcement is a morally ambiguous and politically contentious state practice. Frontline enforcers experience this contentiousness as a threat to their moral authority. This article draws on interviews with U.S. Border Patrol agents to examine their legitimation work, the justificatory narratives they deploy to establish their moral authority and legitimacy of the system they represent. Agents’ legitimation narratives centre on two strateg…
Increasing Latina/o Students' Baccalaureate Attainment: A Focus on Retention
Notwithstanding years of retention efforts, graduation rates of Latinas/os remain alarmingly low. The purpose of this review is threefold. First, the authors go beyond traditional theory and highlight those scholars who shed new information on retention for Latina/o students. Second, they summarize factors that specifically affect Latina/o students. Third, promising practices for effectively retaining Latina/o students in higher education institu…
Reasonable” Force at the U.S.-Mexico Border
While social scientists have studied the relationship between police culture and use of force for decades, federal immigration agents have been left out of these analyses. Addressing this gap is urgent given patterns of excessive force at the militarized U.S.-Mexico border. Drawing on bureaucratic documents and interviews with active Border Patrol agents, this article examines the culture of force within this organization. I show that the Border …
Toward a Cultural Sociology of Immigration Control: A Call for Research
The criminalization of immigration has garnered a great deal of attention in the United States and abroad. Most research, however, examines the political and legal shifts that produced the contemporary system, as well as the implications of these shifts for immigrant communities. The cultural changes that have occurred for frontline immigration agents as an occupational group have not received the scrutiny they deserve. I argue that the control c…
Conservative Rationales, Racial Boundaries: A Case Study of Restrictionist Mexican Americans
The 2006 immigration marches have become emblematic of Latinos' united position on immigration. However, solidarity and collective action is only one group formation outcome of sociopolitical exclusion. By ignoring those Latinos who disrupt the tenet of ethnic solidarity against immigration restriction, research has failed to specify the mechanisms that lead some Latinos to depart from their own on a racially bifurcated debate. Drawing on intervi…
Mexican Americans and Immigration Attitudes: A Cohort Analysis of Assimilation and Group Consciousness
This study’s motivating premise is that the ideological context around race, ethnicity, and nationhood shapes the immigration politics of Mexican Americans in distinct eras of U.S. history. To examine this proposition we identify two cohorts of Mexican Americans—those who came of age in the World War II era and those who grew up during and after the Civil Rights movement—and examine whether there are systematic differences in how members of these…
Hispanic Presidents and Chancellors of Institutions of Higher Education in the United States in 2001 and 2006
This manuscript examines the number of Hispanic individuals who serve as presidents or chancellor and the type of institutions they serve. In 2001, only 13 states had institutions in which the president or chancellor was Latina/o. By 2006, that number had increased to 22. Both in 2001 and 2006, 61% of all Latina/o CEOs served in associate's degree institutions. Of the l80 Hispanic-serving institutions in the continental United States that were me…
Colourblindness across borders: The de-racialized logics of Dutch and American border agents
This article illustrates how US Border Patrol agents and Dutch Military and Border Police officers explain racialized border control outcomes, through colourblind ideologies. These ideologies—legalism, criminalization and securitization—function as euphemisms that allow border agents to downplay the importance of immigrants’ race/ethnicity in their decision making and behaviour. Yet, underlying these colourblind ideologies are racialized immigrat…
Fleeting civilities: Narrative accounts from agents and migrants at the US-Mexico border
This paper draws on interviews with Border Patrol agents and Mexican migrants to examine narrative accounts of humanitarian governance—instances where expected control and restriction are replaced with courtesy, humor, or kindness. Our respondents’ narratives cluster around three types of moments of fleeting civility: (a) those where agents and migrants acknowledge the respective roles they play in the US immigration system, often by conceding th…
Increasing Latina/o Students' Baccalaureate Attainment: A Focus on Retention
Notwithstanding years of retention efforts, graduation rates of Latinas/os remain alarmingly low. The purpose of this review is threefold. First, the authors go beyond traditional theory and highlight those scholars who shed new information on retention for Latina/o students. Second, they summarize factors that specifically affect Latina/o students. Third, promising practices for effectively retaining Latina/o students in higher education institu…
Hispanic Presidents and Chancellors of Institutions of Higher Education in the United States in 2001 and 2006
This manuscript examines the number of Hispanic individuals who serve as presidents or chancellor and the type of institutions they serve. In 2001, only 13 states had institutions in which the president or chancellor was Latina/o. By 2006, that number had increased to 22. Both in 2001 and 2006, 61% of all Latina/o CEOs served in associate's degree institutions. Of the l80 Hispanic-serving institutions in the continental United States that were me…
Conservative Rationales, Racial Boundaries: A Case Study of Restrictionist Mexican Americans
The 2006 immigration marches have become emblematic of Latinos' united position on immigration. However, solidarity and collective action is only one group formation outcome of sociopolitical exclusion. By ignoring those Latinos who disrupt the tenet of ethnic solidarity against immigration restriction, research has failed to specify the mechanisms that lead some Latinos to depart from their own on a racially bifurcated debate. Drawing on intervi…
Empathy, morality, and criminality: The legitimation narratives of U.S. Border Patrol agents
Border enforcement is a morally ambiguous and politically contentious state practice. Frontline enforcers experience this contentiousness as a threat to their moral authority. This article draws on interviews with U.S. Border Patrol agents to examine their legitimation work, the justificatory narratives they deploy to establish their moral authority and legitimacy of the system they represent. Agents’ legitimation narratives centre on two strateg…
Mexican Americans and Immigration Attitudes: A Cohort Analysis of Assimilation and Group Consciousness
This study’s motivating premise is that the ideological context around race, ethnicity, and nationhood shapes the immigration politics of Mexican Americans in distinct eras of U.S. history. To examine this proposition we identify two cohorts of Mexican Americans—those who came of age in the World War II era and those who grew up during and after the Civil Rights movement—and examine whether there are systematic differences in how members of these…
Toward a Cultural Sociology of Immigration Control: A Call for Research
The criminalization of immigration has garnered a great deal of attention in the United States and abroad. Most research, however, examines the political and legal shifts that produced the contemporary system, as well as the implications of these shifts for immigrant communities. The cultural changes that have occurred for frontline immigration agents as an occupational group have not received the scrutiny they deserve. I argue that the control c…
Reasonable” Force at the U.S.-Mexico Border
While social scientists have studied the relationship between police culture and use of force for decades, federal immigration agents have been left out of these analyses. Addressing this gap is urgent given patterns of excessive force at the militarized U.S.-Mexico border. Drawing on bureaucratic documents and interviews with active Border Patrol agents, this article examines the culture of force within this organization. I show that the Border …
Colourblindness across borders: The de-racialized logics of Dutch and American border agents
This article illustrates how US Border Patrol agents and Dutch Military and Border Police officers explain racialized border control outcomes, through colourblind ideologies. These ideologies—legalism, criminalization and securitization—function as euphemisms that allow border agents to downplay the importance of immigrants’ race/ethnicity in their decision making and behaviour. Yet, underlying these colourblind ideologies are racialized immigrat…
Bordering on Indifference: Immigration Agents Negotiating Race and Morality
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 Indif…
Strategic coupling and the imperative resilience of Mexican immigrant women in the United States
Fleeting civilities: Narrative accounts from agents and migrants at the US-Mexico border
This paper draws on interviews with Border Patrol agents and Mexican migrants to examine narrative accounts of humanitarian governance—instances where expected control and restriction are replaced with courtesy, humor, or kindness. Our respondents’ narratives cluster around three types of moments of fleeting civility: (a) those where agents and migrants acknowledge the respective roles they play in the US immigration system, often by conceding th…
Feeding migrants to cultivate a moral self: An analysis of food relief in U.S. and Mexican migration control
Criminal Justice: Maatschappelijk effectieve strafrechtspleging 2023-2029
Political science (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (8 works) · Immigration (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Criminology (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Migration, Health and Trauma (5 works) · Ethnic group (4 works)