Infrastructural Coercion: How Resource‑Gated Power Creates Captivity

Overview

Across multiple fields — sociology, domestic violence research, critical infrastructure studies, digital rights, and economic dependency theory — a shared pattern emerges: control over essential resources becomes a mechanism of domination. When the resource in question is internet connectivity, the resulting harm is uniquely severe because modern life is structured around digital access.

This article synthesizes these fields to show how infrastructural control becomes a form of captive‑making, why individuals have almost no defense against it, and how it sabotages autonomy, employment, education, and basic survival tasks.

1. Infrastructure as a Site of Power

Infrastructure is not neutral. It is a social system, a technical system, and a political system simultaneously. Scholars of critical infrastructure argue that whoever controls the infrastructure controls the flow of life: communication, mobility, economic participation, and access to institutions.

Internet access is now as essential as electricity or transportation. It is the gateway to:

employment portals
school platforms
banking
telehealth
government services
logistics and relocation
food ordering and delivery
social connection

When this gateway is controlled, throttled, or intermittently removed, the person on the receiving end experiences functional isolation even if they are physically surrounded by others.

2. Coercive Control and Resource Restriction

Domestic violence scholarship provides the clearest framework for understanding interpersonal infrastructural control. Coercive control is defined as a pattern of domination that strips a person of autonomy through strategic deprivation, surveillance, and constraint.

Traditionally, this includes:

restricting transportation
restricting money
restricting communication
restricting access to social networks
restricting access to food or utilities

Internet access fits directly into this pattern. It is a resource, and restricting it is a form of resource‑based abuse. What makes digital access unique is that it is a meta‑resource: it is the resource that grants access to other resources.

When someone controls your internet, they control your access to:

employment
education
healthcare
housing
mobility
community
information

This is not merely an inconvenience. It is a structural form of captivity.

3. Digital Rights and Network Dependency

Digital rights scholars describe the internet as a precondition for participation in modern society. The term “digital enclosure” refers to situations where a single actor controls the digital environment of another, determining what they can access, when, and how.

In interpersonal contexts, this enclosure becomes a form of networked coercion:

throttling bandwidth
cutting connectivity
sabotaging routers or modems
controlling passwords or accounts
manipulating access during critical tasks

Because so many essential tasks require stable internet — job applications, relocation logistics, grocery ordering, communication with landlords, banking — the person experiencing this control becomes functionally immobilized.

4. Economic Sociology and Dependency Loops

Resource dependency theory explains how power emerges when one actor controls a resource that another actor cannot easily replace. Internet access is difficult to replace because:

it requires physical infrastructure
it requires financial resources
it requires installation and equipment
it requires stable housing
it requires contractual relationships with providers

If the person experiencing control does not have independent access to these prerequisites, they become trapped in a dependency loop:

They need internet to secure employment.
They need employment to secure independent housing.
They need independent housing to secure independent internet.
Without internet, they cannot complete steps 1–3.

This loop is a form of structural captivity created through infrastructural control.

5. Infrastructural Violence and Captive‑Making

Critical infrastructure studies use the term infrastructural violence to describe harm enacted through control of essential systems. This includes:

shutting off water
cutting electricity
restricting transportation
limiting communication networks

When applied interpersonally, infrastructural violence becomes a form of captive‑making. Captivity here does not require physical restraint. It emerges from:

immobilization
isolation
dependency
deprivation
inability to perform essential tasks

If a person cannot:

order groceries
communicate reliably
complete work tasks
attend school
manage medical needs
coordinate relocation
maintain social ties

then they are effectively captured by the infrastructure they cannot access.

This form of captivity is invisible to outsiders because it does not look like traditional restraint. It looks like “technical issues,” “connectivity problems,” or “bad internet.” But the social consequences are profound.

6. Why Individuals Have Almost No Defense

The fields converge on a single conclusion: infrastructural control is nearly impossible to defend against at the individual level.

6.1. The resource is essential

Internet access is not optional. It is required for survival tasks, economic participation, and mobility.

6.2. The resource is centralized

Most people cannot install independent infrastructure. They rely on:

ISPs
landlords
shared accounts
shared equipment
shared physical space

This centralization creates vulnerability.

6.3. The resource is technical

Even highly capable individuals cannot fix:

throttling
intermittent outages
account lockouts
router sabotage
ISP‑level manipulation

without access to the infrastructure itself.

6.4. The resource is time‑sensitive

Critical tasks — job applications, relocation logistics, medical appointments, school deadlines — require timely access. Intermittent access is not enough.

6.5. The resource is socially invisible

Because infrastructural control looks like “internet problems,” outsiders rarely recognize it as abuse. This invisibility reduces social support and increases isolation.

6.6. The resource is tied to housing

Without stable housing, independent internet access is nearly impossible. This ties infrastructural control to broader patterns of housing precarity and domestic captivity.

7. The Social Consequences of Infrastructural Captivity

When someone’s internet access is controlled or sabotaged, the consequences cascade across every domain of life.

Employment

inability to apply for jobs
inability to communicate with employers
inability to complete remote work
missed deadlines
perceived unreliability

Education

missed assignments
inability to attend classes
inability to submit work
academic penalties

Autonomy

inability to make plans
inability to coordinate logistics
inability to maintain independence

Access to Basic Needs

inability to order groceries
inability to manage medical care
inability to coordinate transportation
inability to manage finances

Relocation and Safety

inability to search for housing
inability to schedule movers
inability to coordinate relocation
inability to access safety resources

Infrastructural captivity is not metaphorical. It is a material condition that restricts a person’s ability to survive, move, or change their circumstances.

8. Synthesis: A Unified Framework

Across fields, the phenomenon can be understood as:

Interpersonal Infrastructural Coercion
A form of coercive control enacted through manipulation of essential infrastructure, producing dependency, isolation, and functional captivity.

This framework integrates:

coercive control (DV studies)
infrastructural violence (critical infrastructure studies)
digital enclosure (digital rights)
resource dependency (economic sociology)
technological coercion (tech‑abuse research)

Together, these fields reveal that infrastructural control is not a minor inconvenience. It is a systemic method of domination that removes a person’s ability to act, move, connect, or survive.

Conclusion

Infrastructural coercion is one of the most powerful and least recognized forms of abuse. It weaponizes the systems people rely on to participate in society. Because internet access is a meta‑resource — the resource that grants access to other resources — controlling it creates a form of captivity that is nearly impossible to escape without external intervention or relocation.

This synthesis shows that infrastructural control is not simply a technical problem. It is a social problem, a power problem, and a survival problem. Understanding it requires integrating multiple fields of thought, and addressing it requires recognizing the profound vulnerability created when essential infrastructure becomes a tool of domination.

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