Erick Moreno Superlano ‘22 Writes About His Migrant Experience

Erick Moreno Superlano ‘22 has recently published an article for openDemocracy, exploring his own experience as a Venezuelan migrant worker and later student in Germany. 

“We were forced to leave our home in Venezuela after government supporters attempted to kill my mother. I cut short my undergraduate degree and traveled to Germany, where I sought refuge,” Superlano writes. He speaks of the obstacles and of the precarity which German meritocracy imposes onto non-European migrants. “Meritocracy, I learned, had prerequisites: elite schooling, language and cultural fluency, the right kind of passport. Those lacking these forms of capital were turned away at the door, barred from continuing our education. Instead, we were rerouted into low-wage labor,” Superlano writes. 

He details his experience of working as a manual laborer on a production line at an industrial bakery, a job which consisted of pre-dawn shifts, packaging bread. “Germany’s labour market, like its education system, sorts migrants by their accumulated resources: diplomas, accents, skin colour and legal status. To the bakery, we weren’t students or refugees. We were just cheap labour. But the workforce had sorted itself into a clear pecking order,” he says. 

After two years in the production line, Superlano found a way out through Bard College Berlin: “BCB is a fantastic crack in a closed system, recognising forms of value other German institutions had ignored. I had time to think, read, and write for the first time in years. It was a turning point for me. But it also showed me that migration isn’t only about mobility – it’s about class and position too. Mobility alone means little without opportunities for security and progression.” He illustrates with two more stories of Venezuelan migrants who he met in New York, USA. 

“Migration, I’ve come to learn, is not a rupture from the inequality and exploitation back home. It is a global reorganisation shaped by borders, race, class, vulnerabilities, and labour relations – dynamics which affect us at home and follow us abroad too. To understand labour migration today, we must ask not only who crosses borders, but also who is permitted to exit global systems of cheap, expendable labour – and who is kept inside,” he concludes. 

Superlano has completed a bachelor’s degree within the Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought at Bard College Berlin with a concentration in Literature and Rhetoric and is currently a Doctor of Philosophy candidate in Migration Studies at the University of Oxford. 

The full article can be found here. 

Post Date: 05-12-2026