An unequal distribution of lovability
“Precisely because a living being may die, it is necessary to care for that being so that it may live. Only under conditions in which the loss would matter does the value of the life appear. Thus, grievability is a presupposition for the life that matters.”
With Hannah Millar
It can be uncomfortable to consider that some young people are treated as less worthy of our care and protection than others. When stories are told about the struggles of these children, they often lack amplification, only gaining significant public attention after tragic outcomes, if at all. When we cover our ears to the stories of children who have experienced adversity, trauma, and who have caused harm, are we blocking our collective capacity to listen, learn, and prevent future harm? And in doing so, are we upholding the very status quo that perpetuates the causes of harm?
This muffling of stories is particularly bleak in light of the recent UK Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel report (CSPRP 2025), which demands attention to the silence on race and racism within safeguarding policy and practice. The realities of Black, Brown, and Mixed Heritage children frequently fade into background noise. Disparities in which safeguarding stories receive airtime and whose deaths are highlighted are not accidental; they reveal how we value different groups of children.
For example, the sustained media coverage and national review following the tragic deaths of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson (CSPRP 2022) created a collective impression of their resounding significance. While understandable, this public grief, amplified by mainstream media, shows an imbalance in how we perceive and mourn young lives, particularly those of racialised teenagers. This raises a crucial question: are some children, by virtue of their age and ethnicity, deemed less in need of our protection, and therefore, less lovable, rendering their lives as less significant losses?
Precarity, grievability, lovability.
To understand why some young lives are more readily mourned than others, we turn to Judith Butler's concepts of grievability and precarity. Butler (2004) describes grievability not just as an emotional response but as a politically and socially structured phenomenon. It's intertwined with how a life is recognised and valued; if a life isn't fully perceived as a life, its loss cannot be fully grieved. This recognition of worth is not evenly distributed.
Butler’s concept of precarity explains this uneven distribution. While precariousness is a universal human condition of vulnerability, precarity is the politically and socially produced condition where this vulnerability is heightened for specific populations due to factors like poverty, discrimination, or institutional neglect. It's the unequal distribution of safety and social support that makes some lives more precarious than others.
Complementing Butler, bell hooks' ethic of love offers a useful counterpoint. Hooks (1999) describes societal love not as a sentiment, but as a proactive, collective practice of care and responsibility that extends to every human being. Societal love is about recognising the inherent worth of each person, suggesting that lovability is an intrinsic right, not earned. The painful reality is that this recognition and care are not equally distributed. As hooks argues, the opposite of societal love is not hate, but indifference—an absence of concern that sustains precarity and allows lives to languish as ungrievable. Thus, some groups of young people are presented as unlovable, contributing to their non-grievability. If society fails to see their inherent worth and overlooks the precarity they face, it becomes harder to extend care, notice their struggles, or mourn their losses.
Devaluation of racialised young people in UK Media
Societal anxieties and prejudices contribute to the othering of certain groups, especially racialised teenagers. This involves projecting negative traits onto them, making them seem inherently different or dangerous (Moore, Jewell, and Cushion 2016). When racialisation is combined with anxieties about teenagers and social disorder, structural discrimination is amplified, leading to the devaluation of lives. In tragic situations where children harm or kill others, understandable human reactions can lead to moral panics and the belief in evil (Messenger Davies 2013). These reactions reinforce simplistic media narratives, reducing complex individuals to one-dimensional monsters, fuelled by public fears (Webster and Saucier 2015) and desires for harsher punishments (Hough 2025). This prevents us from acknowledging a young person's history of trauma, abuse, and institutional failures.
The media significantly shapes public perception. Instead of nuanced reporting on socio-economic challenges, stories are often sensationalised, perpetuating harmful narratives that maintain structural inequalities. Research consistently shows how communities of colour, including their youth, are negatively framed in UK media, linking them to crime, violence, or extremism, contributing to their othering (Tell Mama 2025; Moore, Jewell, and Cushion 2016). This relentless narrative of fear denies the lovability and grievability of racialised young people. When humans are cast as villains, the media stifles our collective capacity for mourning and prevents deeper modes of listening and learning.
Sahara Salman, Child E, and Axel Rudakubana
The circumstances of Sahara Salman, Child E, and Axel Rudakubana illustrate these dynamics. Following the tragic death of four-year-old Sahara Salman in a house fire, there was widespread public grief. However, media attention heavily focused on her South Asian family and their complex interactions with services (BBC News 2022, 2023), subtly implying that even when a child is grievable, the precarity faced by their family—related to housing or social circumstances—may be minimised and mismanaged.
The safeguarding review for Child E (ESSCP 2025), a 14-year-old who died by suspected suicide, highlights how the complexities of adolescence can lead to harm going unnoticed. The focus on managing explicit family conflict may have overshadowed the teenager's less tangible distress. The complex realities of youth mental health can contribute to a silent form of ungrievability, where mental suffering goes unrecognised.
The murders committed by Axel Rudakubana provoked understandable outrage. Media and institutional discourse focused on portraying Axel as evil, and repeatedly using tropes like ‘savage’ and ‘brutal' (Bidwell 2025, House of Commons 2025, Manchester Evening News 2025, Wilson 2025). This narrative overshadowed Axel's well-documented history of warning signs and calls for help. He had contacted Childline expressing violent thoughts, was known to carry knives, had attacked peers and staff, and had been referred to Prevent three times (Home Office 2025).
This story also speaks to a child in profound need, persistently calling for help. Attending to the services that failed Axel and those he harmed does not excuse his horrific actions but draws critical attention to missed opportunities. No adult appears to have fully grasped Axel’s violent thoughts or connected the dots to reach him in time. The dehumanising media framing, focusing on pathology rather than context, prevents deep listening and learning for prevention. When the story is stripped of nuance, the human element of suffering is lost, leaving some young people less grievable and less lovable.
The sound of silence in safeguarding
This form of failure is a pervasive factor disproportionately affecting racialised children who, experiencing poverty and/or racial discrimination, face more precarity. This isn't due to inherent vulnerability but rather is politically sustained. The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel report (CSPRP 2025), led by Jahnine Davis, found widespread silence around race and racism in child safeguarding. Its central finding is a hesitancy to address race, racism, and racial bias within the system. We infer this muting is not accidental but represents a substantial institutional and societal deficiency.
The report highlights instances where race is omitted from assessments or discussed only superficially. The specific challenges, adversity, and cumulative effects of racism faced by Black, Brown, Mixed Heritage, and other minoritised children are frequently overlooked or dismissed by the very services meant to protect them. This failure of recognition allows structural inequities to persist, reproducing the conditions of harm. This institutional silence is a profound expression of what bell hooks calls indifference. By refusing to engage with the complex realities of racism, the system fails to extend care and recognition—or lovability—to all children equally. It actively ignores the specific precarity that these children face. Their experiences are rendered invisible, and their suffering is not fully identified, learned from, or grieved, hindering preventative action.
Towards a more equal distribution of lovability
The disparities in how young lives are perceived, valued, loved, and grieved in the UK reflect a troubling reality. The devaluation of youth, particularly racialised teenagers, is a pervasive psycho-social trend influenced by societal anxieties and structural inequalities, reinforced by media portrayals, and embedded through institutional silence. These factors converge in disturbing social relations where certain young people are treated as unlovable in their lives and ungrievable in their deaths.
We call for a shift beyond simplistic binaries of ‘evil perpetrator’ and ‘innocent victim’ toward recognition of the inherent worth and lovability of all young people. When we reduce anyone to a simplified trope, we not only deny their humanity but also absolve institutions of responsibility to address failures that contribute to safeguarding tragedies.
How can we create conditions for crucial conversations about precarity, moving beyond retribution and toward deeper understanding?
How can we move together toward what hooks called an ethic of love to ensure every young person is held as lovable?
One aspect of our collective response may lie in amplifying calls to address the silences and biases that render some young lives less grievable, engaging in deep structural critique, and embracing the practice of collective love for every child.
References
BBC News (2022) 'Thornton Heath blast: Sahara Salman, four, killed in explosion', BBC News, 9 August. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-62470971
BBC News (2023) 'Family of girl killed in gas blast not yet re-homed', BBC News, 15 Feb 2023, Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-64651038
BBC News (2025) ''Evil' Southport killer jailed for minimum 52 years’, BBC News, 23 January 2025. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gweeq1344o
Bidwell, S (2025) 'The case for execution’, The Critic, 28 January 2025. Available at: https://thecritic.co.uk/the-case-for-execution/#:~:text=Axel%20Rudakubana%20deserves%20the%20death,28%20January%2C%202025
Britton, P (2025) "What should I do if I want to kill somebody?": Axel Rudakubana's chilling call to Childline years before Southport murders', Manchester Evening News, 23 January 2025 Available at: https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/axel-rudakubana-chilling-call-to-30848806
Butler, J. (2004) Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso.
Butler, J. (2009) Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?. London: Verso.
Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel (CSPRP) (2022) Child protection in England: National review of the murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson. London: Department for Education. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-review-into-the-murders-of-arthur-labinjo-hughes-and-star-hobson
Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel (CSPRP) (2025) It's Silent: Addressing race and racism in child safeguarding practice reviews. Panel Briefing Four. London: Department for Education. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67cb0a9d5993d41513a45c5b/Race_Racism_Safeguarding_March_2025.pdf
East Sussex Safeguarding Children Partnership (2025) Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review for Child E. Lewes: East Sussex Safeguarding Children Partnership. Available at: https://www.esscp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/ESSCP-Child-E-LCSPR-Learning-Briefing-March25.pdf.
Home Office (2025) Prevent Learning Review. London: Home Office. Available at:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prevent-learning-review-southport-attack/prevent-learning-review-axel-muganwa-rudakubana-accessible
hooks, b. (1999) All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow.
Hough, M. (2025) ‘Thirty-five Years of Research on Attitudes to Punishment’, in (Eds G. Watson and M. Manikis) Sentencing, Public Opinion and Criminal Justice: Essays in Honour of Julian V Roberts, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
House of Commons (2025) Official Report (Hansard), Debate on the Murders Committed by Axel Rudakubana, London: UK Parliament. Available at: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2025-01-21/debates/70A99479-E1AB-4D28-AC21-024A77A05D3E/SouthportAttack
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Webster, C. and Saucier, P. (2015) ‘Demons are everywhere: The effects of belief in pure evil, demonization, and retribution on punishing criminal perpetrators’ in Personality and Individual Differences 74 (2015) 72–77 Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.09.041
Wilson, E (2025) 'Did Axel Rudakubana deserve a harsher sentence?’', The Spectator, 24 January 2025. Available at: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/should-axel-rudakubana-have-been-given-a-harsher-sentence/
