Mining is, in effect, a process of auditing and verifying Bitcoin transactions to prevent the problem of “double spending”. Double spending is where someone with cryptocurrency tries to spend the same coin twice. With physical currency, you can’t buy a drink in a pub with a £20 note and then pop to the shops to buy some groceries with the same £20 note.
With cryptocurrency, there is a risk that someone with Bitcoin could make a copy of that Bitcoin and send that to a merchant instead of the real thing. In the real world, the cashier looks at a £20 note to ensure it is not fake—and this is what Bitcoin miners are trying to do with cryptocurrency; they are checking to ensure that a transaction has not been made twice.