Arabs and Asians in Qatar: Who does the dirty work? Existing scholarship on Gulf migration has underlined how nationality, language, religion, gender, and ethnicity have a significant impact on migrants’ experiences of living and working in the region. Systems of migration governance and patterns of international labor recruitment have evolved in alignment with the Gulf states’ particular economic, political, and socio-cultural interests at given historical junctures, all of which have made the issue of migrants’ nationality ever more salient. These national interests have led to the transition from Arab to Asian labor forces across the Gulf, and the majority of labor migrants to the region come from outside the Arab world. The paper examines policies and practices adopted by the state in Qatar to control the flow of foreigners, and pays particular attention to scrutinizing how and why Qatar has become more selective and politicized in negotiating labor migrants’ right to entry and residence based on their country of origin. Obtaining data on migrants disaggregated by nationality is no any easy task in Qatar, due to poor tracking mechanisms from sending states, as well as perceived sensitivities to publically sharing such data in the host state. This paper’s empirical contribution is in its presentation, of original, unpublished, disaggregated data on Arab and Asian migrants’ integration into Qatar’s labor market. The data provides substantial verification that Arab and Asian migrants in Qatar tend to predominantly work in different occupational sectors. A general interpretation of the data provided in this paper is that in percentage terms Arab migrants tend to occupy positions in sectors which are possibly at higher income and at higher skill levels than their Asian counterparts. The causal reasons for this variation may well be the cultural and linguistic skills and abilities that Arab migrants bring to their positions.