Understanding the factors and reasons influencing migration can assist countries in policymaking and planning to alter migration trends. Accordingly, this study aimed to examine the effects of various factors on migration. For analyzing economic factors, variables such as per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and the misery index (the sum of unemployment and inflation rates) were employed. Social factors were analyzed using the Gini coefficient and the share of educational expenditures in the government budget. Political factors were represented by the good governance index, external factors by a sanctions dummy variable, and environmental factors by the rainfall index. To estimate the effects of these variables on migration in Iran, an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model was utilized over the period 1980–2022. The study's findings revealed that economic factors had the most significant influence on migration compared to other factors. In the short term, per capita GDP was the most influential variable, while in the long term, the misery index had the greatest effect on migration. Moreover, political factors were identified as the second most critical determinant of increased migration in the country. Additionally, the results indicated that social and external factors also had considerable impacts on migration, whereas environmental factors did not show a significant effect on this variable.