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This short article argues that climate mobility policy and research need to confront the ways in which the category of ‘climate mobility’ is gaining institutionalized authority, possibly creating an enabling environment for new kinds of forced, unjust movement. The authors warn of an uncomfortable alignment emerging between the humanitarian impulse that has long shaped climate mobility research and policy - to move people out of climate harm’s way - and the capacity of states and private interests to justify moving people against their will in the name of climate adaptation and disaster prevention. This is one of the many reasons that the ‘right to stay’ and the recognition and respect of community agency are so profoundly important.