The Dispersion offers a unique account of how the word "diaspora", coined in the third century BCE, has recently become both one of the more emblematic terms of the global era and a fashionable academic concept.

Stéphane Dufoix is Professor of Sociology at the University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense. He has published on exile politics and diasporas (including Diasporas, University of California Press, 2008). He is working on a historical sociology of the concept of globalization.