This thesis explores the relationship between migration and disease in c.1830 – c.1860. Each chapter questions how convicts, emigrants and the surgeons who accompanied them thought about disease and in turn how disease changes how we understand migration historically. It is a study of the creation of medical knowledge across the geographical space of the voyage to Australia and emphasises an understanding of disease as a mental and physical interaction between humans and their environment. The thesis argues that this understanding allowed migrants and colonists to see disease at sea as a test of migrants’ and convicts’ fitness to colonise. The point of departure for this thesis is that the Australian sailing voyage provides a unique and prolonged tension between shipboard confinement and global movements through ever-changing, often extreme, oceanic climates. From this premise, six individual chapters follow the trajectory of the voyage from Britain to Australia. These chapters analyse individual disease such as cholera, fevers, scurvy and consumption, as well as deepening our understanding of the tropics and quarantine by rethinking these histories through a maritime dynamic. Throughout, the thesis analyses evidence in convict and emigrant ship surgeons’ journals, migrants’ diaries and published medical literature as its primary source material, supplemented by government reports and contemporary newspapers. Collectively, the chapters of the thesis connect conventionally separate histories of medicine, convict transportation, colonial emigration, and British welfare and prison reform. By exploiting a uniquely maritime tension between shipboard confinement and global migration, the thesis provides a new way to understand the persistence of ideas about the relationship between people, environment, migration and disease in the modern period.

Η παρούσα έρευνα, πραγματεύεται το μεταναστευτικό φαινόμενο και ειδικότερα τη σημαντικότητα που έχει η γνώση της γλώσσας της χώρας υποδοχής για τους μετανάστες. Η έντονη παρουσία των μεταναστών στην Ελλάδα και οι δυσκολίες που αυτοί αντιμετωπίζουν στον κοινωνικό και εργασιακό τομέα, εξαιτίας της αδύναμης κοινωνικής τους θέσης, ήταν η αφορμή για την πραγματοποίηση της έρευνας. Η αναζήτηση των παραγόντων που θα μπορούσαν να βελτιώσουν την ένταξή τους στη χώρα έστρεψε το προσωπικό ενδιαφέρον στην μελέτη της εκμάθησης της γλώσσας της χώρας υποδοχής. Το μεθοδολογικό εργαλείο που χρησιμοποιήθηκε είναι η ημιδομημένη συνέντευξη και τα ερευνώμενα υποκείμενα είναι μετανάστες, ανεξαρτήτως νομικού καθεστώτος, που κατοικούν στην Ελλάδα. Αναλύοντας τα δεδομένα των συνεντεύξεων, συμπεραίνεται πως η επιρροή της γλώσσας είναι περιορισμένη, καθώς σχετίζεται κυρίως με προσωπικά οφέλη (όπως για παράδειγμα, η αύξηση της αυτοπεποίθησης του μετανάστη), και δεν βοηθά ουσιαστικά, όσο πιστεύεται, στη βελτίωση των συνθηκών ζωής του μετανάστη και την πληρέστερη ένταξή του. Επίσης, εκτός από το ζήτημα της ένταξης, παρατηρήθηκε πως ακόμη και η εκδοχή της γλώσσας που ο μετανάστης μαθαίνει να χρησιμοποιεί, συμβάλλει στην παγίωση της αρχικής του θέσης στην κοινωνία υποδοχής. Αυτό συμβαίνει, επειδή ο γλωσσικός κώδικας που αυτός χρησιμοποιεί διαφέρει από εκείνον της κυρίαρχης - αστικής τάξης, οπότε μιλάμε για κοινωνική αναπαραγωγή. / The present research analyses the immigration phenomenon and more specifically, the importance of the official language´s knowledge of the recipient country for the immigrants. The large presence of immigrants in Greece and the difficulties which they confront in social and labor brenches due to their weak social position, was the starting point of this research project. The search of the agents which could improve their integration in the country made me aim my personal interests into the field of language learning in the recipient country. Semi - structured interviews where used as the methodological tool of the research whose subjects were immigrants living in Greece, regardless of their legal status. By analyzing the results of the interviews, we come to the conclusion that the influence of the language is limited since it is related to personal profits (for example: increase of the immigrants self-confidence feeling) and essentially, does not boost, as it is believed, the immigrant´s life standards´ improvement and his full integration. Moreover, apart from the integration fact, the research also showed that the language stratum which the immigrant acquires and uses, contributes to the settlement of his initial social position in the recipient country. This occurs due to his usage of the language code, which differs from the one used by the dominant - middle class, so it is a question of social reproduction.