Trautmann, Micah2026-05-272026-05-272026-01-28TRAUTMANN M. Life in Limbo: Asylum Detention and the Environmental Conditions of Hope. Journal of the American Philosophical Association. 2026;12(2):182-200. doi:10.1017/apa.2026.100242053-4485https://doi.org/10.1017/apa.2026.10024https://hdl.handle.net/10315/43753This article is published under a Creative Commons CC-BY license.Within the recent glut of philosophical work on hope, relatively little attention has been devoted to the circumstantial conditions that frustrate or accommodate hoping. In this article, I show how an individual’s spatial environment can constrain their capacity to sustain determinate hopes for the future via an extended case study: long-term refugee detention. Taking seriously refugees’ claims that a central cause of widespread hopelessness is the feeling of being in limbo, and drawing on recent work on the role of the imagination in hoping, I demonstrate how an individual’s spatial environment can limit imaginative access to the interim steps between their present circumstances and a desired future, making it difficult to see any way their hope could be realized.Attribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/HopeDespairRefugeesAsylumDetentionArticle