Climate Captivity: When <i>in-situ</i> Adaptation and Moving Out Are No Longer Options

The term captivity describes the condition in which people face increasing exposure to human-made climate disruptions or disaster risks without effective means to mitigate these impacts—whether through in-situ adaptation, mobility, or migration. Captivity offers an alternative to terms such as immobility or trapped, shifting the focus toward the root causes of why people remain in potentially uninhabitable places. This article establishes captivity as an analytical framework to examine the diverse reasons and consequences of prolonged environmental risk exposure. It also challenges the implicit assumption in climate migration and adaptation research that affected individuals are responsible for not leaving sooner or making the “right” choices. Rather than ceasing their efforts to adapt or relocate, captive individuals often experience repeated failures in their attempts to reduce vulnerability, leading to maladaptation over time. Although empirical findings remain fragmented across different fields and are frequently marginalized through the uncritical deployment of terminology, the outward projection of threats, whether by displacing risk spatially, temporally, or cognitively, may constitute the sole remaining coping mechanism as environments become progressively uninhabitable. By conceptualizing captivity, we aim to deepen understanding of the lived experiences, decision-making processes, and daily struggles of those caught in worsening environmental conditions.