European governments are now engaging in one of the largest exercises in social engineering that the continent has seen since the Second World War. Hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and refugees in Europe are now being denied their basic right to choose where they live and are instead being compulsorily dispersed.

Spreading the 'burden' is:

· the first book-length study of dispersal policies;

· explicitly comparative in nature and written by three national experts;

· highly topical and controversial as the review of dispersal policies is under way in many countries;

· a valuable case-study of how society deals with 'outsider' groups and space.

The book is essential reading for national and local policy makers, those interested in human rights, social policy and refugee studies, as well as human geographers and sociologists.