Abstract
This article reconstructs and analyses the origins of the European policy of externalizing border control, understood as a strategy of involving countries of origin and transit in the management of flows of migrants and asylum seekers and in counteracting irregular immigration, understood as the entry or stay of foreign nationals in violation of the rules set by the country of arrival. While the legal and political literature has mainly focused on the relationship with non-EU countries and the developments that have taken place over the last quarter of a century, this study shows how current European externalization practices began in the mid-1980s and how the countries on the southern periphery of the European Community (EC) have led the way in this process. Moreover, this research shows how the Schengen and Dublin systems, which still form the basis of European migration and asylum policy, were essentially driven by a logic of 'internal externalization', which then expanded to include European, Asian and, above all, African countries increasingly external to the EC and, later, the European Union (EU).