Sociological immigrant integration research in Western Europe has pointed towards several independent variables explaining immigrant integration outcomes. Immigrants’ individual characteristics and larger socio-political contexts in the country of origin and destination have been pointed out as possibly determining integration outcomes. This literature has however neglected an important dimension of immigrant participation and belonging in Western Europe, id est the postcolonial legacy of former European colonizers. Only very scarce and recent historical literature has pointed towards the relevance of this independent variable, advancing the ‘postcolonial bonus’ hypothesis (Oostindie, 2011). This hypothesis posits that immigrants from former colonies had both individual and collective advantages over other non-Western immigrants like citizenship rights and advantages in the realm of cultural capital (familiarity with language and culture, kinship relations). This panel wants to verify the postcolonial bonus hypothesis in several former European colonial powers and for several postcolonial migrant communities. The papers of this interdisciplinary panel of historians, sociologists and demographers investigate how the colonial past plays into questions of belonging, socio-economic and political participation and trust of postcolonial migrants in the country of the former colonizer. Do postcolonial migrants do better or different with regards to labour market participation, educational attainment, political participation; and if yes, why so? Have postcolonial communities developed political resentment towards the receiving country, and if yes in what sense? By answering these questions the panel will set the stage to further exploring the explanatory capacity of a neglected variable of immigrant integration outcomes, bridging historical and sociological research.