Migration debates often begin in the wrong place. They ask how many migrants a country should accept, which migrants should be prioritised and how quickly they should arrive.

These are important questions, but they are not the first question. The first question is more basic: what is migration for?

The answer is not simple, because migration serves more than one purpose. It’s a tool of economic management. It’s a response to demographic change. It’s part of how countries remain connected to the world. But it is also something deeper: an expression of the human condition itself.

People move. They always have. Long before passports, visas and border agencies, humans moved in search of safety, opportunity, family, knowledge, trade, love and freedom. Movement is one of human history’s defining features.

The challenge for governments is not to abolish migration. The challenge is to manage migration well enough that it supports prosperity, protects human dignity and sustains social cohesion.

Migration is the most debated public policy issue of the current moment, both in Australia and overseas. In this five-part series, we unpack how Australia’s migration system works, both practically and politically, and what its future might look like.

Migration as an economic tool

The most familiar argument for migration is utilitarian. Countries need migrants because migrants do useful things.

They fill skill shortages, staffing hospitals, aged-care homes, universities, farms, construction sites, restaurants, laboratories and technology firms.

They help employers adapt to changing conditions. In a fast-moving economy, it can take decades to educate and train a domestic workforce for needs that may change in a few years. Migration gives governments and employers a way to respond more quickly.

This doesn’t mean migration is a substitute for investing in the local workforce. It isn’t. A serious country must educate, train and support its own people.

But even the best education system cannot perfectly anticipate future labour needs. Technological change, especially around artificial intelligence and the digital economy, is disrupting work so quickly that traditional workforce planning is struggling to keep up.

Migration is also one of the main ways wealthy countries manage population ageing.

Australia, like many rich societies, has fewer children than........

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