Italian Brazilians
| Total population | |
|---|---|
|
No official numbers. 10.5% of Brazil's population (according to Schwartzman); 22,753,000 descendants (Italian source); between 18 and 23 million descendants (according to García); 31 million descendants, 15% of the population (according to Pertile and the Embassy) |
|
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Mainly Southern, São Paulo and Minas Gerais. Some immigration to Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo. | |
| Languages | |
| Predominantly Portuguese. Minority Talian. | |
| Religion | |
|
|
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Other Italians · Mediterranean, Catholic and/or Romance-speaking European Brazilians such as Portuguese Brazilians, Spanish Brazilians, Swiss Brazilians, French Brazilians, German Brazilians, Austrian Brazilians, Greek Brazilians and Brazilian immigrants in Italy |
No official numbers. 10.5% of Brazil's population (according to Schwartzman); 22,753,000 descendants (Italian source); between 18 and 23 million descendants (according to García); 31 million descendants, 15% of the population (according to Pertile and the Embassy)
Italian Brazilians (Italian: Italobrasiliani, Portuguese: Ítalo-brasileiros) are Brazilian citizens of full or partial Italian descent.
There are no official numbers about how many Brazilians have Italian ancestry, as the national census conducted by IBGE does not ask the ancestry of the Brazilian people. In the last census to ask about ancestry, from 1940, 1,260,931 Brazilians said to be the child of an Italian father, while 1,069,862 said to be the child of an Italian mother. Italians were 285,000 and naturalized Brazilians, 40,000. Therefore, Italians and their children were just over 3.8% of Brazil's population in 1940.
A 1999 survey, conducted by the sociologist, former president of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), Simon Schwartzman, indicated that 10.5% of Brazilian respondents claimed to have Italian ancestry; hence they would make up around 20 million descendants in a national population of 200 million. An Italian source, from 1996, cites the number of 22,753,000 descendants. The Embassy of Italy in Brazil, in 2013, reported the number of 31 million descendants of Italian immigrants in Brazil (about 15% of the population), half of them in the state of São Paulo.
According to the Italian government, there are 31 million Brazilians of Italian descent, All those figures relate to Brazilians of any Italian descent, not necessarily linked to Italian culture in any significant way. According to García, the number of Brazilians with actual links to Italian identity and culture would be around 3.5 to 4.5 million people. Scholar Luigi Favero, in a book on Italian emigration between 1876 and 1976, pinpointed that Italians were present in Brasil since the Renaissance: Genoese sailors and merchants were between the first to settle in colonial Brazil since the first half of the 16th century, and so—because of the many descendants of Italians emigrated there from Columbus times until 1860—the number of Brazilians with Italian roots should be increased to 35 million.
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Wikipedia