Traditionally a core aspect of state sovereignty, immigration control has first moved upwards to the intergovernmental sphere. It has then been brought closer to supranational governance, and is now gradually moving outwards towards the realm of EU foreign relations. This article interprets this move as the continuation of established patterns of transgovernmental cooperation in an altered geopolitical and institutional context. It explains internationalisation as a strategy of immigration ministers to increase their autonomy towards political, normative and institutional constraints on policy-making. Whereas these constraints were originally located at the national level, they are now increasingly perceived in communitarising immigration politics. The shift ‘outwards' may thus be interpreted as a strategy to maximise the gains from Europeanisation while minimising the constraints resulting from deepening supranationalism. Yet this might in the long run also yield a widening of the external migration agenda, distracting it from the original focus on migration control.