In this ethnographic analysis of the implementation of 1990s welfare reform, Watkins-Hayes investigates how the professional, racial, class, and community identities of welfare caseworkers and supervisors shaped the implementation of the new policy and other organizational dynamics. Watkins-Hayes finds 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 in ways that would offer the needed support to low-income families.

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The book, The New Welfare Bureaucrats: Entanglements of Race, Class, and Policy Reform, was released in 2009 by the University of Chicago Press. In order to complete this project, Dr. Watkins-Hayes received support from The National Science Foundation (Grant No. 0512018), The Brookings Institution, and the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor.