Displaced Without Moving: In-Situ Climate Displacement, Delta Memory, and the Public Humanities of the Bengal Delta

Climate displacement is often understood after people move, yet deltaic communities may experience displacement while remaining in place. This first-conference manuscript lays the foundation for the postdoctoral project by reviewing literature, identifying gaps, and formulating qualitative working hypotheses. The proposed solution is a Delta Storytelling Framework that reads in-situ climate displacement through fiction, oral memory, testimony, documentary culture, and public narratives of the Bengal Delta. The review synthesises five bodies of scholarship: climate mobility, in-situ displacement and immobility, Bengal Delta studies, postcolonial ecocriticism and blue humanities, and public humanities. The preliminary synthesis shows that existing studies explain migration, hazard, and vulnerability well, but they less fully explain damaged dwelling, ecological grief, memory, gendered labour, and the right to remain. The study therefore proposes four testable qualitative hypotheses to be examined through close reading, narrative analysis, and concept mapping. Its application lies in developing a public-humanities vocabulary for climate justice, so the Bengal Delta can be understood not only as a vulnerable region but also as a theory-producing site.