ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the politics of European Union (EU) internal security and its so-called 'external dimension' and explores what a critical take on them might look like. It looks to translate the analysis of the trajectories of European (in) security into a different understanding of its current features, including its so-called external dimension. In the EU's institutional categories, internal security is usually considered as part of the area of freedom, security and justice, established with the entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty. The starting point of an alternative analysis of EU internal (in)security politics that does not rely on the assumption that these politics involve the interplay between a stable ‘inside’ and its projection ‘outside’ is to highlight the overlapping spatialities involved. This is certainly a matter where conventional and reflexive analyses of EU internal security can agree.
