The term dispersion catches the notion of being scattered, driven away from your comfort zone, now a stranger in a strange land. The term was applied to the Jews who had been driven from the Promised Land at the time of the Babylonian exile and so lived scattered/dispersed around the world (including in the area where Peter’s addressees lived). From sources outside the Bible we learn that Emperor Claudius of Rome had established a number of cities in the provinces Peter lists and populated them with people from other parts of his empire. Both these point indicate that Peter’s readers knew from what they saw around them what being exiles of a dispersion was.