Vagrant Lives in Colonial Australasia: Regulating Mobility, 1840-1910

Coleborne, Catharine

ISBN 10: 1350252727 / ISBN 13: 9781350252721

Published by Bloomsbury Academic, 2025

Former library book; May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G1350252727I4N10

Synopsis:

Investigating the history of vagrants in colonial Australia and New Zealand, this book provides insights into the histories and identities of marginalised peoples in the British Pacific Empire. Showing how their experiences were produced, shaped and transformed through laws and institutions, it reveals how the most vulnerable people in colonial society were regulated, marginalised and criminalised in the imperial world. Studying the language of vagrancy prosecution, narratives of mobility and welfare, vagrant families, gender and mobility and the political, social and cultural interpretations of vagrancy, this book sets out a conceptual framework of mobility as a field of inquiry for legal and historical studies. Defining ‘mobility’ as population movement and the occupation of new social and physical space, it offers an entry point to the related histories of penal colonies and new ‘settler’ societies. It provides insights into shared histories of vagrancy across New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and New Zealand, and explores how different jurisdictions regulated mobility within the temporal and geographical space of the British Pacific Empire.

About the Author: Catharine Coleborne is Professor of History at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her research interests include historical understandings of mobility, mental illness, institutions, medicine, law and health in colonial Australia and New Zealand.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Vagrant Lives in Colonial Australasia: ...
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication Date: 2025
Binding: Paperback
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket