The New Welfare Bureaucrats: Entanglements of Race, Class, and Policy Reform (review)

Since the passage of the Personal Responsibility Act of 1996, a significant literature on welfare reform has emerged. However some areas of study have been largely neglected. While it is commonly accepted that discretionary decisions by frontline workers have consequences for welfare-reliant women, little research has focused on understanding how and why welfare workers make the decisions they do. And little theoretically-informed sociological research has led to proposals about ways for local welfare programs to improve their service delivery. Celeste Watkins-Hayes's compelling and well-written book, The New Welfare Bureaucrats: Entanglements of Race, Class, and Policy Reform makes significant strides in filling these gaps.

Through ethnographic and interview research at two welfare offices in Massachusetts, Watkins-Hayes explores the factors shaping professional identities and how these identities lead to what is commonly referred to as "worker discretion." Welfare offices are described as "catch-all bureaucracies" where clients go for a myriad of problems that are often outside the purview of welfare policy and provisions. Workers must find a way to negotiate their roles within an organization that is largely unprepared to service the vast and multiple needs of their clients; in other words, they have a lot of discretionary decisions to make. This book shows that the professional identities of workers shape the interactions workers have with clients and the decisions they make. Two primary professional identities are identified — efficiency engineers and social workers. Watkins-Hayes explains that institutional forces have — at different times and in different policy contexts — encouraged and discouraged the development of these two identities. Workers adopting either of these identities can point to organizational cues and messages that support their choices, thus Watkins-Hayes reveals some of the internal contradictions of welfare programs.

One of the strengths of this book is the way Watkins-Hayes embraces complexity. She understands that while institutional factors are important, workers' race and class identities and experiences also shape their interactions with clients. The last two substantive chapters of the book focus on the ways workers' race and class backgrounds affect their dealings with clients. Unfortunately these chapters seem a bit disjointed from the first part of the book.

Watkins-Hayes's portrayal of the Fishertown welfare office, and the demographic changes occurring there and within the community, is superb. She uncovers the racial tension workers feel as their community and the welfare rolls experience a small but significant migration of black, Latino and Asian families moving in from larger cities in search of affordable housing. By illuminating the differences in the way that welfare administrators and frontline workers respond to recent immigrants from outside the United States (particularly from Cambodia and Spanish-speaking countries) vs. how they respond to families of color migrating from larger U.S. cities, the book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the intersections of race, class and nationality in people's experiences with state institutions. Although the earlier focus on professional identities is set aside, Watkins-Hayes eventually returns to this topic and complicates the picture. Instead of the expected finding that "social workers" were more likely than "efficiency engineers" to help migrant families find resources in Fishertown, the way workers think about race and class, their communities, and the newcomers entering them also shapes their interactions with clients and the assistance they provide them.

In discussing the Staunton office — a diverse inner city office with few white clients but many white workers — Watkins-Hayes does an excellent job of portraying the experiences of black and Latino workers within the organization and showing the significant barriers they face in reaching higher levels of management. However, I was disappointed that the discussion of black and Latino welfare workers' interactions with same-race clients did not provide more of a link back to the issue of professional identities. Watkins-Hayes describes the ambivalence of black and Latino workers' toward welfare reform, and their deployment of a "racialized...