ILPC 2026

The significance of labour mobility power to the understanding of labour process was highlighted by Smith (2006): in the capitalist free market system, labour mobility allows workers to improve their labour market position and secure higher pay by changing jobs both in internal and external labour markets. Smith (2010) suggested that international labour migration is one of the manifestations of labour mobility power: workers from lower-income countries had been moving to high income countries in order to improve their personal and family levels of living. Central Eastern European (CEE) migration to the UK can be classified as an example of the transnational relocation based on mobile deployment of labour power: CEE workers would move to the UK because it would allow them to earn three or four times more than in the new EU member state from the former communist bloc (MacKenzie and Forde, 2009). Moreover, this form of labour power mobility has been taking place within the framework of EU freedom of movement: under this system, EU citizenship gave migrant workers greater flexibility in moving between jobs and using labour mobility in a strategic way (Alberti, 2012). In contrast to other regulatory frameworks, migrant workers could bypass the need to secure state-sanctioned or employer sponsored work permits: CEE and other EU migrants could enter, leave or come back to the UK labour market without UK employer sponsorship or special permits issued by the state. This paper draws on biographical interviews conducted with CEE migrants (15 Poles, 1 Latvian and 1 Slovak citizen) and uses the concept of labour mobility power in exploring post-enlargement and pre-Brexit CEE migration to the UK. Following Andrijasevic and Sacchetto (2016), the paper avoids treating intra-EU migration as a linear movement and as a single workplace experience. Instead it analyses the totality of the labour migration process by exploring how migrants use labour power from the point of departure of the country of origin, in the process of transnational relocation and the movement in the UK labour market itself. It reveals that migrants’ mobility labour power is mediated by the reliance on family/kinship networks and functions within broader family dynamics (the quest for family re-union, the negotiations between partners, etc). EU freedom of movement enabled CEE workers to achieve higher levels of pay when compared to the sending countries and turns kinship networks into a principle resource of labour mobility. EU citizenship also enabled some of interviewed migrant workers to change jobs in the UK and seek superior labour market outcomes. The post-migration type of labour mobility took different forms depending on the level of education, previous work experience, gendered family dynamics and personal preferences. The paper ends with the tentative analysis of the implications of Brexit for CEE and other EU workers living in the UK: the extent to which the curtailment of EU freedom of movement by UK government would impact different groups of EU migrants and their mobility power is questioned and discussed.