That sinkin’ feeling: Environmentally induced distress on a disappearing island

Abstract Residents of Tangier Island, Virginia, a subsiding island in the Chesapeake Bay, embody psychosocial dimensions of environmental change. Analysis of ethnographic data shows islanders’ experiences and articulations of anxiety, panic, and despair as “that sinkin’ feeling,” resulting from the stress of living with the long‐term threat of imminent displacement. Islanders generally acknowledge higher‐order causes, such as economic precarity, socio‐spatial and institutional losses, and demographic decline, rather than the underlying ecological changes that produce them. The reality and threat of land subsidence not only reshapes the physical island, but undermines social relations among islanders, resulting in often tragic outcomes as many attempt to escape into substance abuse and suicide. On Tangier Island, ecological changes, including those caused by anthropogenic climate changes such as sea‐level rise, are the prime cause of islanders’ crisis of well‐being—disappearing feelings among disappearing people on a disappearing island.