With their terms ending, five Watson postdoctoral fellows and one postdoctoral research associate look to continue their academic careers armed with new skills acquired in the Watson Institute's unique and robust intellectual environment.
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Catherine Sirois
Postdoctoral Fellow in International and Public Affairs
Areas of Expertise
Bureaucracy, Children & Families, Criminal Justice, Health & Welfare, Inequality & Poverty, Urban Policies & Politics
Areas of Interest
Poverty and inequality; punishment and society; community and urban sociology; health disparities; race, class, and gender; qualitative and mixed methods
Biography
Catherine Sirois completed her Ph.D. in Sociology at Stanford University in June 2023. Her research lies at the intersection of scholarship on poverty, punishment, and governance. She studies how the state governs marginalized groups—particularly low-income Black and Brown communities—and how the dimensions of state governance, from everyday institutional interactions to population-level policies, intersect to shape the life chances of group members. Her current book project uses ethnographic methods to study the governance of crossover youth—children at the junction of child welfare and juvenile justice institutions—and broaden our understanding of interlocking state processes. Catherine received her B.A. in Sociology from Harvard University (2010) and her M.A. in Sociology from Stanford University (2017).
Research
My scholarship investigates how the state governs groups on the urban margins—particularly low-income Black and Brown communities—and how the dimensions of state governance, from everyday institutional interactions to population-level policies, intersect to shape the life chances of community members. Specifically, I study how the state regulates children at the junction of child welfare and juvenile justice institutions, as well as the effects of mass incarceration and restrictive immigration laws on household life, community wellbeing, and broader urban inequality. To examine these questions, I have deployed a range of qualitative and quantitative methods, including ethnographic observation, community-based interview studies, and analyses of survey and administrative data that leverage causal inference techniques. Taken together, my research contributes to the fields of community and urban sociology, law and crime, poverty and inequality, and methods for studying hard-to-reach populations.
Publications
Sirois, Catherine. “Contested by the State: Institutional Offloading in the Case of Crossover Youth.” American Sociological Review 88(2): 350-377.
Sirois, Catherine. “The Strain of Sons’ Incarceration on Mothers’ Health.” Social Science & Medicine 264:113264.
Sirois, Catherine. “Household Support and Social Integration in the Year After Prison.” Sociological Forum 34(4): 838-860.
Torche, Florencia and Catherine Sirois. “Restrictive Immigration Law and Birth Outcomes of Immigrant Women.” American Journal of Epidemiology 188(1): 24-33.
Western, Bruce and Catherine Sirois. “Racial Inequality in Employment and Earnings After Incarceration.” Social Forces 97(4): 1517-1542.
Western, Bruce, Anthony Braga, David Hureau, and Catherine Sirois. “Study Retention as Bias Reduction in a Hard-to-Reach Population.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(20): 5477-5485.
Western, Bruce, Anthony Braga, Jaclyn Davis, and Catherine Sirois. “Stress and Hardship After Prison.” American Journal of Sociology 120(5): 1512-1547.
Teaching
Governing Marginalized Groups: How State Institutions Shape Social Inequality in the U.S.