Micro‐ and meso‐regulatory spaces of labour mobility power: The role of ethnic and kinship networks in shaping work‐related movements of post‐2004 Central Eastern European migrants to the United Kingdom

European Union (EU) enlargement in 2004 produced a multi‐layered regulatory space structuring labour mobility between Central Eastern Europe and the United Kingdom. Building on a critical revaluation of the concept of labour mobility power as a phenomenon that cannot be reduced to earnings' maximisation, the paper contends that although post‐2004 migration was nested in the macro‐regulatory mechanism of EU freedom of movement of labour, kinship and ethnic networks constituted additional layers in regulating migrants' mobility trajectories. Drawing on migratory biographies, the analysis examines how these regulatory mechanisms shaped migrants' actions and intentions related to transnational exit, contributed in creating linkages through which migrants sought to actualise their labour power on a transnational scale, and provided directions for labour mobility power's use within the receiving country. By embedding labour mobility power within kinship (micro) and ethnic (meso) networks, this paper offers a complimentary understanding of labour mobility power that takes it beyond the homo economicus explanatory model.