Despite the Arab Gulf states' large and diverse foreign populations, existing frameworks have largely failed to capture the wide variety of migrant types and migration experiences in the region. Recent literature has called for scholars to account for complex and interconnected experiences of inclusion, exclusion, and belonging in the Gulf. Yet, to date, these theories have neither been tested empirically nor expanded to account for migrants’ cultural and socio-economic identities and home country characteristics of migrants. This article introduces the concept of bargaining power to develop a new theoretical and empirical framework that characterizes and quantifies intersectional lived experiences of migration and belonging. Using data from a nationally representative survey of foreign residents in Qatar, we identify two separable dimensions of migrant lived experiences corresponding to the internal and external bargaining power afforded by cultural group, socio-economic class, and home-country characteristics, respectively. We then use our framework to generate a typology of Gulf migration experience and, significantly, to predict migrants’ actual attitudes and behaviors: subjective evaluation of the host country and intentions for long-term settlement. We conclude by describing the relevance of our bargaining power framework to the study of varieties of migration experience in other migration regimes.