An Analysis of the Institutional Environment of Migration Management with an Emphasis on the Relevant Higher-Order Documents

Migration is currently one of the top ten issues in the world and its management has taken a considerable importance. Since Iran as a country of emigrants’ origin is facing an outflow of human and economic capital, it is important to recognize and analyze the attitude of the institutional environment towards migration management. According to the neo-institutionalist approach, the governmental higher order documents, as an institutional environment governing migration management, determine other countries’ approaches towards the way they take advantage of the opportunities and ensure greater coordination at the level of executive institutions. This paper aims to interpret and analyze the institutional environment of migration management through thematic analysis method. According to the thematic model of the governmental higher-order documents relevant to the issue, migration management is based on the following four criteria: paying enough attention to human dignity and high  humane values, strengthening the social consensus and convergence, participating in  and being attracted by the national development,  and preventing the emigration of the elite. Three different approaches, namely support-oriented, opportunity-oriented, and threat-oriented ones, with the dominance of the second one, have been deduced from the content of the relevant governmental higher-order documents.The orientation of policies on regulating the migration flow of the skilled labor is mainly based on the participatory policy approach rather than the policy of  retention and return. As the obtained results show, it is necessary to introduce a national migration management discourse in all policies and executive programs within the framework of a national strategic migration management document.