Brazilians (Portuguese: brasileiros, pronounced [bɾaziˈle(j)ɾus]) are citizens and people associated with Brazil. This connection can be historic, cultural or legal. For most Brazilians several (or all) of these connections exist and are all sources of their Brazilian identity, sharing a common culture, language and in many cases history and/or ancestry.
Brazil is a multiethnic society, which means that it is home to people of many ethnic origins.
Being Brazilian is a civic and cultural phenomenon, rather than an ethnic one. As a result, the degree to which Brazilian citizens identify with their ancestral roots varies significantly depending on the individual, the region of the country, and the specific ethnic origins in question. Most often, however, the idea of ethnicity as it is understood in the anglophone world is not popular in the country.
After the colonization of Brazil by Portugal, most of the 16th century, the word "Brazilian" was given to the Portuguese merchants of the Brazilwood tree, designating exclusively the name of such profession, since the inhabitants of the land were, in most of them, indigenous, or Portuguese born in Portugal or in the territory now called Brazil.
However, long before the independence of Brazil, in 1822, both in Brazil and in Portugal, it was already common to assign the Brazilian gentilic to a person, usually of clear Portuguese descent, resident or whose family resided in the State of Brazil (1530–1815), belonging to the Portuguese Empire. During the lifetime of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves (1815–1822), however, there was confusion about the nomenclature.
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Definition
According to the Constitution of Brazil, a Brazilian citizen is:
Anyone born in Brazil, even if to foreign born parents. However, if the foreign parents were at the service of a foreign State (such as foreign diplomats), the child is not Brazilian;
Anyone born abroad to a Brazilian father or a Brazilian mother, with registration of birth in a Brazilian Embassy or Consulate. Also, a person born abroad to a Brazilian father or a Brazilian mother who was not registered but who, after turning 18 years old, went to live in Brazil;
A foreigner living in Brazil who applied for and was accepted as a Brazilian citizen.
According to the Constitution, all people who hold Brazilian citizenship are equal, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender or religion.
A foreigner can apply for Brazilian citizenship after living for four uninterrupted years in Brazil and being able to speak the Portuguese language. A native person from an official Portuguese language country (Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, and East Timor) can request the Brazilian nationality after only 1 uninterrupted year living in Brazil. A foreign born person who holds Brazilian citizenship has exactly the same rights and duties of the Brazilian citizen by birth, but cannot occupy some special public positions such as the Presidency of the Republic, Vice-presidency of the Republic, Minister (Secretary) of Defense, Presidency (Speaker) of the Senate, Presidency (Speaker) of the House of Representatives, Officer of the Armed Forces, and Diplomat.
In 2021, the population in Brazil is 214 million people. The number is updated live by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE – Census).
Ethnicities
Brazil's census categories are not based on genetics, but on self-identified social and culturally constructed race classifications. It uses five categories for race and color: Branca (White), Preta (Black), Amarela (Yellow, referring to East Asians), Parda (Brown, for mixed-race people), and Indígena (Indigenous), which date to the colonial period. Studies have shown that many Brazilians change their racial self-identification over time.
In the 2010 census, 47.51% of Brazilians classified themselves as White, 43.42% as Brown, 7.52% as Black, 1.10% as Yellow, 0.43% as Indigenous and 0.02% did not answer. The racial composition of Brazil varies significantly by region, with higher percentages of White Brazilians in the South and Southeast, and higher percentages of Brown and Indigenous populations in the North and Northeast.
Brazilians are mostly descendants of Portuguese settlers, post-colonial immigrant groups, enslaved Africans, and Brazil's indigenous peoples. The main historic waves of immigration to Brazil have occurred from the 1820s well into the 1970s, most of the settlers were Portuguese, Italians, Germans, and Spaniards, with significant minorities of Japanese, Poles, Ukrainians, and Levantine Arabs.
Ancestry of Brazilians
The first inhabitants of what would become Brazil were people whose ancestry can be traced back to Asian populations that crossed the Bering Strait, passing from Siberia to the Americas. There are indications of the presence of indigenous peoples in the current Brazilian territory dating from 16,000 BC in Lagoa Santa, from 14,200 BC in Rio Claro and from 12,770 BC in Ibicuí (Rio Grande do Sul). Estimates of the number of Native Americans that were living in present-day Brazil in 1500 vary between 1 and 5 million. They were divided into two major language families: Macro-Jê and Macro-Tupi. With the arrival of the Portuguese in present-day Brazil, in 1500, a significant part of the indigenous population perished, mainly due to contamination by Eurasian diseases to which the Indians had no biological immunity, such as smallpox, measles, yellow fever or flu. In most cases, these contaminations were involuntary; however, there are also reports of intentional infection. Despite this, millions of Brazilians have indigenous ancestry. In Brazilian history, the practice of "cunhadismo" was very common; it was an ancient indigenous practice of incorporating strangers into their community, through the delivery of indigenous girls as wives. In this context, many Portuguese settlers had relationships with indigenous women, whose descendants make up a large part of the current Brazilian population.
The European ancestry of Brazilians is mainly Portuguese. Between 1500 and 1822, Brazil was a Portuguese colony and the number of Portuguese who emigrated to Brazil, during this period, is estimated at between 500,000 and 700,000. According to the IBGE, 100,000 Portuguese emigrated to Brazil in the first two centuries of colonization. Historians James Horn and Philip D. Morgan estimate this number to be much higher at 250,000. At that time, Brazil was the largest producer of sugar in the world (specifically the northeastern captaincies of Pernambuco and Bahia), and this economic growth attracted many Portuguese immigrants. However, it was in the 18th century that the greatest number of Portuguese arrived in colonial Brazil. According to the IBGE, 600,000 Portuguese emigrated to Brazil, between 1701 and 1760. James Horn and Philip D. Morgan pointed to smaller numbers: 250,000 between 1700 and 1760 and 105,000 between 1760 and 1820. Celso Furtado estimated, for the entire 18th century, that between 300,000 and 500,000 Portuguese arrived in Brazil. Maria Luiza Marcilio pointed to an intermediate number: 400,000. Considering that Portugal only had 2 million inhabitants in 1700, it was a mass emigration. The reason for this mass emigration lies in the discovery of gold in Minas Gerais, which led to a period of economic prosperity not only in the Minas Gerais region, but also on the Brazilian coast.
Present foreign-born population
From 2011 to 2019, 1,085,673 immigrants came to Brazil, mostly from Venezuela (142,250), Paraguay (97,316), Bolivia (57,765), Haiti (54,182), and Colombia (32,562).
According to the 2022 census, Brazil was home to over 1 million foreign-born people, representing 0.5% of the total Brazilian population of 203 million. This showed an increase of 592,000 or 70.3% over the 2010 census. This was the highest number born abroad since 1980, when the census counted 1.1 million foreigners.
By region:
Latin America and the Caribbean (646,015)
Europe (203,284)
Asia (100,373)
Africa (33,393)
North America (24,811)
Oceania (1,281).
Refugees
In 2021, there were 60,011 people recognized as refugees in Brazil.
Between 2011 and 2020, recognitions of refugee status in Brazil by the National Committee for Refugees (Conare) were mostly to Venezuelans (46,412 recognitions), Syrians (3,594) and Congolese (1,050).