This is the last international workshop of the Academic Frontier Project, 'Social Change in Asia and the Pacific' of the Institute for International Studies, Meiji Gakuin University (2001-2005), supported by Meiji Gakuin University and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Japan).

　　　Drastic and rapid changes in the contemporary world have been pressing us, i.e. specialists of international studies, to renew our intellectual tools to grasp what is going on around us. However, as Michel Foucault, Edward W. Said or other distinguished predecessors pointed out, it is tremendously hard to reexamine own ways of recognition and knowledge with truly critical mind.

　　　In order to seek our way out to the 21st century, we held three workshops, inviting colleagues from abroad: Can We Write History? Between Postmodernism and Coarse Nationalism (2002), What is to be Written? Setting the Agendas for Studies of History (2003) and Regional Differences and Inequalities in Asian Countries (2004). Those have produced not only the thick proceedings of international studies, but also rich intellectual communication and lasting networks beyond borders and disciplines.

　　　This time, with the opening speech of Kei Takeuchi, Director of Institute for International Studies, Meiji Gakuin University, we will have three main sessions on new perspectives for international studies: immigrants, refugees and women. Those are not only 'problems' of our age, but suggest us new agendas of alternative research and practice. By two-day intensive discussion, we hope that this small workshop will break up our own narrowness to enlarge the scope for studies of global society.