In the absence of an international migration regime, the rising salience of migration issues and the limits of unilateral policies led the European Union to seek appropriate venues for co-operation with the sending and transit countries of migrants. Many of the newer relevant multilateral or regional venues are soft law frameworks. Conversely, trade agreements provide a formal, hard law instrument for inserting migration clauses. Based on a quantitative analysis of EU trade agreements and expert interviews, this article investigates how far the EU is engaging in strategic issue-linkage when including migration clauses in its trade agreements. Testing hypotheses derived from ration- alist and institutionalist approaches, it thereby provides an empirical test of its acclaimed identity as ‘trade power' or ‘market power'.