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Migration, whether from disaster to safety, or for a new land of opportunity, is deeply interwoven with cooperation – it is only through our extensive collaborations that we are able to migrate, and it’s our migrations that forged today’s global society. Migration made us.
无论是处境转危为安，还是前往充满机遇的新土地，迁徙都与合作紧密相连。只有通过广泛的合作，我们才能成功迁徙，正是我们的迁徙塑造了今天的全球社会。迁徙造就了我们。
It is our national identities and borders that are the anomaly.
反常的倒是我们的国家身份和国家边界。
The idea of keeping foreign people out using borders is relatively recent.
利用边界将外来人口拒之门外的想法是相对较新的。
States used to be far more concerned about stopping people from leaving than preventing their arrival.
过去，各国更关心的是阻止人们离开，而非阻止人们抵达。
They needed their labour and taxes.
他们需要外来人口提供劳动力和税收。
Some may think that it’s flags, anthems and an army to guard your territory that’s needed to develop a sense of nationhood.
有些人可能认为，培养国家意识需要国旗、国歌和保卫领土的军队。
But in fact, the credit should go to a successful bureaucracy.
但事实上，这些应该归功于一个成功的官僚机构。
Greater government intervention in people’s lives and the creation of a broad systemic bureaucracy were needed to run a complex industrial society and these also forged national identity in its citizens.
要使一个复杂的工业社会运行，需要政府加大对人民生活的干预力度，并创建一个广泛的系统性官僚机构，而这些也在其公民中塑造了国家认同。
For instance, Prussia began paying unemployment benefit in the 1880s, which was issued initially in a worker’s home village, where people and their circumstances were known.
例如，普鲁士从19世纪80年代开始发放失业救济金，最初发放地点是工人的家乡，那里的人们彼此都认识、也了解各自的情况。
But it was also paid to people where they migrated for work, which meant a new layer of bureaucracy to establish who was Prussian and therefore entitled to benefits.
但救济金也会发放给迁徙到此处工作的人，这意味着新层面的官僚机构要来确定谁是普鲁士人，因此谁有资格享受救济金。
This resulted in citizenship papers and controlled borders.
这导致了公民身份文件的产生，边境也受到了控制。
As governments exerted greater control, people got more state benefits from their taxes, and more rights, such as voting, which engendered a feeling of ownership over the state. It became their nation.
随着政府施加更大的控制，人们从税收中获得了更多的国家福利，以及更多的权利，如投票权，这就产生了这个国家属于我们的感觉。国家也就形成了。
Nation states are an artificial social structure predicated on the mythology that the world is made of distinct, homogenous groups that occupy separate portions of the globe, and claim most people’s primary allegiance.
民族国家是一种人为构建的社会结构，建立在神话的基础上，即世界是由不同却同质的群体组成，这些群体占据着地球上不同的区域，要求大多数人的拥戴。
The reality is far messier.
实际情况要混乱得多。
Most people speak the languages of multiple groups, and ethnic and cultural pluralism is the norm.
多数人会说不同群体的语言，种族和文化的多元化也是常态。
The idea that a person’s identity and wellbeing is primarily tied to that of one invented national group is far-fetched, even if this is presupposed by many governments.
一个人的身份和幸福主要与一个虚构的国家群体的身份和幸福紧密联系，这种观点是牵强的，即使这是许多政府预先假定的。
The political scientist Benedict Anderson famously described nation states as “imagined communities”.
政治学家本尼迪克特·安德森将民族国家描述为“想象的社群”。
