Celeste M. Watkins-Hayes

Assistant Professor of Sociology and
African American Studies
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Northwestern University
PhD, Sociology, Harvard University, 2003
c-watkins@northwestern.edu
Curriculum Vitae

Celeste Watkins-Hayes’ areas of research specialization are urban poverty; social policy; HIV/AIDS; formal organizations (non-profit and government); and race, class, and gender. With Mario Small of the University of Chicago, Watkins-Hayes is the organizer of the Web site, www.urbanorgs.org, which aims to offer new thinking on organizations, inequality, and urban conditions. Watkins-Hayes is also a member of IPR’s Cells to Society (C2S): The Center on Social Disparities and Health.

In addition to publishing articles in Social Problems, Harvard Journal of African-American Public Policy, and The State of Black America, 2001, she has been profiled in Essence and USA Today Weekend. Her first book, The New Welfare Bureaucrats: Entanglements of Race, Class, and Policy Reform, will be published in spring 2009.

Watkins-Hayes received her MA and PhD in sociology from Harvard University and a BA from Spelman College, where she graduated summa cum laude. While at Harvard, she was a fellow in the Harvard Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy. The program draws on sociology, economics, political science, and public policy to train scholars to develop an interdisciplinary approach to research and to participate in the national debate around issues of social inequality.

Current Projects

The New Welfare Bureaucrats: Entanglements of Race, Class, and Policy Reform. This is an ethnographic analysis of the implementation of welfare reform on the front lines of service delivery. It investigates how the professional, racial, class, and community identities of welfare caseworkers and supervisors shape the implementation of policy and other organizational dynamics. Study findings indicate that while welfare reform changed the job descriptions of front-line staff members (from eligibility-compliance claims processors to welfare-to-work caseworkers), these agencies were largely unable to undertake the steps necessary to change employees' professional identities. As a result, welfare reform did not unfold as many policymakers had imagined, and a piecemeal system of service-delivery is now underway. While we have witnessed caseload reductions and increased work among low-income mothers, inequalities abound in how clients receive the services most likely to influence their abilities to sustain economic self-sufficiency. This incomplete revolution in these offices has also solidified many of the long-standing tensions around race, class, and community belonging in ways that have direct and indirect effects on service-delivery and other organizational dynamics. The book, The New Welfare Bureaucrats: Entanglements of Race, Class, and Policy Reform, will be published in spring 2009 by the University of Chicago Press. Support for this project came from the National Science Foundation (grant no. 0512018), Brookings Institution, and National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor.

The Social Consequences of HIV/AIDS for African-American Women: An Ethnographic Study. This ethnographic study explores the social experiences and processes of Chicago-area African-American women infected with HIV/AIDS. By exploring a range of domains in the women's lives, the study seeks to specify some of the ways in which HIV/AIDS impacts their daily living, life chances, and social outcomes. Areas of focus include women’s labor force participation, social network formation and maintenance, intimate relationship dynamics, and child-rearing practices following an HIV diagnosis. The ultimate goal of the study is to highlight some of the social consequences of HIV/AIDS for this population by exploring the short- and long-term effects of the disease on the economic and social well-being of the women and their families. This project has received support from the National Institutes of Health (through the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California, San Francisco) and the National Science Foundation (grant no. 0512018).

Selected Publications

Books

Watkins-Hayes, Celeste. The New Welfare Bureaucrats: Entanglements of Race, Class, and Policy Reform. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press (Forthcoming, Spring 2009).

Articles and Book Chapters

Watkins-Hayes, Celeste. 2009. "Race-ing the Bootstrap Climb: Black and Latino Bureaucrats in Post-Reform Welfare Offices." Social Problems, 56(2): 285-310. 

Watkins-Hayes, C. Human services as ‘race work’? Historical lessons and contemporary challenges of black providers. In Human Services as Complex Organizations, 2nd ed., ed. Y. Hasenfeld. Sage Publications (Forthcoming).

Watkins-Hayes, C. 2008. The social and economic context of black women living with hiv/aids in the U.S.: implications for research. In Sex, Power, and Taboo: Gender and HIV in the Caribbean and Beyond, ed. R. Reddock, S. Reid, D. Douglas, and D. Roberts. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers.

Domínguez, S., and C. Watkins. 2003. Creating networks for survival and mobility: Social capital among African-American and Latin-American low-income mothers. Social Problems 50(1): 111-35.

Watkins, C. 2001. A tale of two classes: Socio-economic inequality among African-Americans under 35. The State of Black America 2001. New York: National Urban League.

Watkins, C. 2000. When a stumble is not a fall: Recovering from employment setbacks in the welfare to work transition. Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy 6(1): 63-84.

IPR Working Papers & Research Notes

Watkins-Hayes, C. 2008. The social and economic context of black women living with HIV/AIDS in the U.S.: Implications for research. Northwestern University Institute for Policy Research Working Paper 08-06.

Watkins, C. 2006. It’s not just about the money: Governmentality and resistance in post-reform welfare offices. Northwestern University Institute for Policy Research Working Paper 06-17.

Comfort, M., and C. Watkins. 2005. HIV/AIDS among people of color: Think local, not just global. Institute for Policy Research News. Northwestern University. 27(1).