Agency in Captivity: Reframing Compliance, Resistance, and Survival in Coercive Control

The compliance–resistance binary remains a dominant lens in the interpretation of agency within coercive control environments. This paper challenges the conceptual adequacy of that binary by proposing a tripartite model of adaptive agency: symbolic, subversive, and negotiated. Drawing on Bourdieu’s habitus, Foucault’s disciplinary power, and Giddens’ structuration theory, the model reframes agency as relational, situated, and contingent emerging not despite constraint but often through it. Symbolic agency captures cognitive-emotional strategies such as reframing, dissociation, and mental defiance. Subversive agency refers to covert acts of behavioural resistance that evade detection. Negotiated agency involves strategic alignment with coercive norms to mitigate harm or retain partial control. This model does not romanticise adaptation, nor equate agency with empowerment. Rather, it offers a vocabulary for recognising survivor strategies that are frequently overlooked in legal, psychological, and policy interpretations of coercion.