In this paper, first analytical insights of my PhD project dealing with forms of diasporic embodiment among Franco-Comorian women living in Marseilles shall be presented. Drawing on empirical material generated from October 2013 to January 2014, the intersectional (re-) production of a ‘Comorian diasporic body’ in Marseilles shall be reconstructed in form of a dispositive analysis (Bührmann/Schneider 2008). In this regard, a special focus shall be put on the relation between constructions of ‘community’ and ‘diaspora’ and the differing and intersecting body politics going along with them. On the one hand, the notion of the ‘Comorian community’ is situated within a ‘biopolitics of communitarization’ in postcolonial Marseilles, racializing Other French citizens, discursively and spatially. On the other hand, ‘community events’ are analyzed as constructing ‘diaspora spaces’ (Brah 1996), re-negotiating notions of embodied belonging. Thus, the ‘Comorian diaspora’ is situated within postcolonial urban biopolitics, ‘community’ body politics and diasporic forms of embodiment.
