With this first issue of the Journal of Autonomy and Security Studies (JASS) we wish to introduce a journal which, as we see it, contributes to the shaping of an area that has up to now not been addressed by any other journal. JASS brings together and reflects three fields of study, which together make up a particular core problematique: autonomy, security, and minority issues. We believe that these issues are of great importance in the complex and multilevel world of today, and that by bringing them together new insights may be gained. In this first issue we present three articles, which may look thematically very different. Nevertheless, they all reflect perspectives on the outer world that emanate – although not totally, of course – from relations between perceived centres and peripheries in colonial, regional and multilevel settings characterised by some asymmetry. It should come as no surprise that asymmetry, whether formulated in terms of classical power terms, or as a globalization perspective, is likely to be a recurrent theoretical and empirical point of departure for studies in a journal that deals with autonomy, minority and security issues. This first issue of JASS is an illustration of this.