For a society composed of diverse communities, it is essential that we consider the kind of vision for social integration policy that is needed, and the ideal roles of diverse actors including governments, municipalities, or non-governmental organizations-In short, we need to find out "How to live together". In this symposium, this critical issue will be discussed, bringing together from around the world experiences and insights into crafting effective social integration policy.

In the context of liberalization of the movement of people, the world is now faced with conflicts such as rejection of migrants and human rights violation, or with challenges in the fields of education, employment and welfare for migrants. However, in Europe, advanced region of social integration policy, and in Asia, where governments have launched their social integration policy for marriage migrants and their children, initiatives are being taken not to close the borders to migrant workers, but to promote their deeper inclusion in host societies, in light of the humanitarian perspective, the change of demographic composition, formulation of reciprocal relationship with the sending countries, and requirement to cope with global economy. And in both of these regions, the state of social integration policy is reassessed and reviewed.

In Japan, municipalities, NGOs are actively conducting measures for social integration, however, due to the fragile legal basis, those measures are not being effectively coordinated. Therefore, if this issue is left unsolved, without serious efforts to clarify the position of migrant workers, and to legislate social integration policy, it may incur large social costs for Japan in the future.

This symposium is intended to provide an opportunity to think of future vision of social integration policy for Japan, learning from experiences had and efforts made around the world to overcome the challenges and problems of social integration.