This article analyses how life course events including education, citizenship, marriage status and having children would affect female migrant labour market integration. This is put in terms of employment status and job quality under the perspective of welfare and production regimes. To investigate different institutional effects, countries representative of these regimes’ typologies, such as the UK and Ireland for liberal market economies/liberal welfare states, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden for coordinated market economies (CME)/social democratic welfare states, alongside Germany and France for CME/conservative welfare states, were employed. European Social Survey data are adopted within a linear probability model, alongside a nested model aggregating life course events. Through these, migrant penalty is analysed regarding labour market outcomes with respect to natives. Among the life course events, education and citizenship acquisition showed a particularly strong impact on migrant penalty, while marriage and having a child did not significantly affect migrant penalty.