Chileans (Spanish: Chilenos, pronounced [tʃiˈlenos]) are an ethnic group and nation native to the country of Chile and its neighboring insular territories.

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.

Although post-independence immigrants never made up more than 2% of the population, there are now hundreds of thousands of Chileans with German,[10] British, French, Croatian, Italian or Palestinian[11] ancestry, though these have also been mostly miscegenated with other groups within the country.

[14] As in other Latin American countries, in Chile, from the onset of Spanish colonization and settlement, miscegenation or mestizaje was the norm rather than the exception.

Today, ethnic and racial self-identities are highly fluid and can differ between persons of the same family, including siblings of the same parentage.

[citation needed] It is dictated not only by strict physical appearance, nor more loosely by ancestry (actual or presumed), but by cultural patterns, social class, wealth and access, language, and prevailing biases of the era.

[16] According to a 2012 estimate by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook, the population consists of 88.9% of "White and non-Indigenous", with the remaining percentages being Amerindians, except for a 0.3% "unspecified".

Related genetic studies conducted on Santiago's mtDNA and Y-DNA found a sex bias in the ethnic origin of those sex-specific chromosomes.

In a 2011 Latinobarómetro survey which asked respondents in Chile what race they considered themselves to belong to, a majority of 67% answered "white", while 25% said "mestizo", and 8% self-classified as "indigenous".

[29] A 2002 national poll revealed that a slim majority of 51.7% of Chileans stated that they believed that they possessed "indigenous blood".

Spanish folk immigrated from all regions of Spain, particularly Andalusia, Extremadura, Basque Country, Asturias, Navarra and Castile.

The indigenous Picunche population of Central Chile disappeared by a process of mestizaje by gradually abandoning their villages (pueblo de indios) to settle in nearby Spanish haciendas.

There Picunches mingled with disparate indigenous peoples brought in from: Araucanía (Mapuche), Chiloé (Huilliche, Cunco, Chono, Poyas[32]) and Argentina (Huarpe[33]).

In 1784, Francisco Hurtado, governor of the province of Chiloé, conducted a population census in Chiloe that totaled 26,703 inhabitants, of which about 64.4% was classified as españoles ("Spaniards", Caucasian and mixed Mestizo people) and 33.5% considered indios ("Indians").

[35][36] In 1812, the Diocese of Concepción conducted a census to the south of the Maule river; however, this did not include the indigenous population — at that time estimated at 8,000 people — nor the inhabitants of the province of Chiloé.

[37] Other estimates in the late 17th century indicate that the population reached a maximum total of 152,000, consisting of 72% whites and mestizos, 18% Indians, and 10% blacks and mulattos.

[38] For many years, Spanish-descent settlers and religious orders imported African slaves to the country, which in the early 19th century constituted 1.5% of the national population.

According to Sergio Villalobos this could have been indebted to the fact that black women and men were often apart as result of their slave labor and an hesitancy of other racial groups to engage with them.

[42][43][44][45][46][47][48] After Chile's independence successive waves of Spanish, Italians, Irish, French, Greeks, Germans, British, Dutch, Croats, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Portuguese and Middle Eastern people immigrated to the country.

[66] These European ethnic groups have intermarried thereby diluting the distinct cultures, descent and identities of the home countries and fusing them among each other.

[67] They were composed of 288,233 Venezuelans, 223,923 Peruvians, 179,338 Haitians, 146,582 Colombians, 107,346 Bolivians, 74,713 Argentines, 36,994 Ecuadorians, 18,185 Brazilians, 17,959 Dominicans, 15,837 Cubans and 8,975 Mexicans.

Of the total indigenous population, 79.8% declared themselves Mapuche; 7.2%, Aymara; 4.1%, Diaguita; 1.6%, Quechua; 1.4%, Atacameño; 0.9%, Colla; 0.4%, Rapa Nui; 0.1%, Kawésqar and 0.1%, Yaghan.

The ranches called fundos, where the huasos lived and worked show strong similarity with Spanish vernacular architecture, especially in the canal roofs and the interior courtyards.

Other Chilean refugees settled (not ranked by order of size) in Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, and Italy.

By far, the largest concentration of Chileans can be found in London with significant other communities being Birmingham, Sheffield and the Manchester–Liverpool Metropolitan area.