Resisting the Narrative Arc: Writing with Disillusionment in Youth Research

Abstract This commentary examines the ethics and politics of co-authorship by reflecting on how disillusionment, silence, and refusal shaped ethnographic research with young people in Mtwara, Tanzania. Following the discovery of offshore natural gas, state and corporate initiatives promoted youth training and entrepreneurship as pathways into the anticipated gas economy. Yet as investments stalled and projects failed to materialise, expectations of prosperity gave way to prolonged waiting and disillusionment, situated within a longer history of regional marginalisation. These conditions posed both an empirical and methodological challenge: how to write with young people whose contributions were often articulated through resignation, opacity, or deliberate withholding rather than through overt speech. Phrases such as “that is the way it is” or invocations of “God’s plan” were not signs of disengagement but critical orientations that refused linear narratives of resilience and advancement. Attending to these orientations re-theorises co-authorship as encompassing silence and refusal alongside voice and visibility. Rather than smoothing contradiction into resolution, writing with disillusionment entails holding unfinishedness as co-produced knowledge. In doing so, this commentary highlights the need for methodological humility and challenges the normative demand for hopeful arcs in youth studies, policy, and publishing.