Digital Diaspora Communities and ‘Bad-Borgs’: Social Media Scapes in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire

Social media has rapidly emerged as one of the most pervasive and populated spaces in the contemporary world, with platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat becoming integral to the collective social psyche. However, despite the central role social media plays in shaping globalglobal communication, there remains a notable gap in literary criticism that addresses its representation in literature and its socio-cultural and political impacts. This chapter seeks to explore the use of social media in Pakistani texts, specifically focusing on its impact on transnational MuslimMuslim identities in Kamila ShamsieKamila Shamsie’s Home FireShamsieHome Fire. Drawing on Sandra Ponzanesi’s work on the creation and dynamics of digital diaspora communities, Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the ‘rhizome’, and Arjun AppaduraiAppadurai’s notion of ‘technoscapes’, I investigate how social media reconstitutes Muslim diasporic communities in the novel. Moreover, this chapter demonstrates that social media has two types of paradoxical agencies in Home FireShamsieHome Fire. While it helps the Pasha family and others within the Muslim diaspora stay connected, fostering a sense of digital community, it also divides people and perpetuates cyberbullying. Through the intra-actionintra-action of social media and human subjectivities, individuals are transformed into cyborgcyborg-like figures, embodying both the liberating and oppressive potential of technology. Social media, while connecting diasporic communities, also generates negative “diffractive waves” leading to the formation of “bad-borg” subjectivities—instances where technology reinforces oppression and marginalization. In this context, the novel uncovers how social media, particularly for transnational Pakistani Muslim subjectivities, becomes a tool for enabling global power inequalities, amplifying discrimination, and subjecting marginalized communities to heightened scrutiny and hatred. By integrating these theoretical insights, this chapter reveals how social media, as depicted in Home FireShamsieHome Fire, both facilitates diasporic connectivity and entrenches socio-political hierarchies, particularly for communities already vulnerable in a globalized digital landscape.