Chapter 2 provides a comprehensive review of existing scholarship on the determinants of labor immigration governance for low-skilled occupations (LILSO) and develops the analytical framework that guides the study. The chapter begins by examining dominant neo-classical political‑economy approaches, which attribute labor migration policy primarily to employers’ economic interests and argue that governments respond to “concentrated benefits and diffuse costs.” While influential, this perspective has been widely criticized for its reductionism, its assumption of a unitary state, and its neglect of political, institutional, and normative dimensions. A second strand of literature introduces a rights-based perspective, particularly Ruhs’s “numbers vs. rights” hypothesis, which posits a trade-off between the volume of incoming migrants and the rights they receive. Although widely debated, this scholarship highlights tensions inherent in LILSO governance and motivates the study’s focus on long-term structural determinants. The chapter then turns to broader critiques emphasizing the need for multi-causal frameworks. Research on state legitimacy, the liberal paradox, and institutional path dependencies demonstrates that governments face competing imperatives—economic demands, constitutional constraints, public attitudes, and international norms—making migration policy inherently contradictory. These insights underscore that labor migration governance cannot be understood through economic explanations alone. Building on this critique, the chapter introduces the migration regime approach as the most suitable analytical lens. It adopts an “internalist” understanding of migration regimes, focusing on the national political, institutional, and socio-economic configurations that produce distinct regulatory profiles. This framework allows the study to capture the complex interplay of actors, structures, historical trajectories, and global influences shaping LILSO policies. The chapter concludes by positioning the study as filling a significant research gap in regime-oriented analyses of labor migration to low-skilled jobs.