Left Behind but Not Forgotten: How Psychosocial Integration Shapes Non-migration Aspirations in Climate-vulnerable Coastal Bangladesh

In climate-vulnerable coastal regions, left-behind family members often choose to stay despite having migration pathways through departed household members, challenging conventional theories of family reunification. This study examines the influence of psychosocial integration on non-migration aspirations among 411 left-behind households in coastal Bangladesh, where primary income earners have migrated, but other household members maintain residence in hazardous areas. Utilizing multistage sampling from the Khulna and Satkhira districts, results from sequential binary logistic regression and structural equation modeling suggest that a significant majority of households express no interest in migration despite climate vulnerability. Psychosocial integration—encompassing place attachment, social capital, community belonging, and institutional ties—emerges as the predominant predictor of this immobility. Counterintuitively, households with higher educational attainment and economic resources exhibit stronger place attachment rather than a propensity for family reunification, suggesting that resource accumulation reinforces rootedness rather than facilitating departure. A longer duration of residence further entrenches this immobility, reflecting the cumulative nature of place-based investment over time. These patterns indicate deliberate adaptation: households compensate for family separation through intensified community embeddedness, with direct implications for climate policies that must navigate competing loyalties between place attachment and family reunification. Theoretically, we develop the notion of ‘informed rootedness’ and suggest three revisions to existing frameworks: a specification of a (‘endogenous aspirations’) auricular model for the AC framework that provides space for capabilities to improve rather than degrade place-based aspirations; a ‘dual-capacity’ reconceptualization of education that raises mobility potential as well as local adaptive capacity; and attention to collective aspects in non-mobility decision-making that stretch beyond individual cost–benefit reflections.