Concept
Chileans (Chilenos, tʃiˈlenos) are an ethnic group native to the country of Chile and its neighboring insular territories. Most Chileans share a common culture, history, ancestry and language. The overwhelming majority of Chileans are the product of varying degrees of admixture between European ethnic groups (predominantly Spaniards and Basques) with peoples indigenous to Chile's modern territory (predominantly Mapuche). Chile is a multilingual and multicultural society, but an overwhelming majority of Chileans have Spanish as their first language and either are Christians or have a Christian cultural background. However, many Chileans do not equate their nationality with ethnicity, but with citizenship and allegiance to Chile. This has resulted due to immigration to Chile throughout its history, and thus the term "Chilean" can now also include people identifying with the country whose connection may not be ethnic, but cultural, historical, legal, or residential. For most modern Chileans, several or all of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their Chilean identity. There is a strong correlation between the ratio of a Chilean's European and indigenous genetic components and their socioeconomic situation. There is a marked continuum existing between the lower classes of a high component of indigenous ancestry and the upper classes of a predominant component of European ancestry. Indigenous inheritance, whether cultural or genetic, is most pronounced in rural areas and in aspects of culture such as Chilean cuisine and Chilean Spanish. Although post-independence immigrants never made up more than 2% of the population, there are now hundreds of thousands of Chileans with German, British, French, Croatian, Italian or Palestinian ancestry, though these have also been mostly miscegenated with other groups within the country. Though the majority of Chileans reside in Chile, significant communities have been established in multiple countries, most noticeably Argentina, United States, Australia and Canada and countries of the European Union.
