Lebanese diaspora in the context of "Latin Americans"

A diaspora (/daɪˈæspərə/ dy-ASP-ər-ə) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. The word is used in reference to people who identify with a specific geographic location, but currently reside elsewhere.

Notable diasporic populations include the Jewish diaspora formed after the Babylonian exile; Romani from the Indian subcontinent; Assyrian diaspora following the Assyrian genocide; Greeks that fled or were displaced following the fall of Constantinople and the later Greek genocide as well as the Istanbul pogroms; Anglo-Saxons (primarily to the Byzantine Empire) after the Norman Conquest of England; the Chinese diaspora and Indian diaspora who left their homelands during the 19th and 20th centuries; the Irish diaspora after the Great Famine; the Scottish diaspora that developed on a large scale after the Highland and Lowland Clearances; the Italian diaspora, the Mexican diaspora; the Circassian diaspora in the aftermath of the Circassian genocide; the Armenian diaspora following the Armenian genocide; the Palestinian diaspora; the Lebanese diaspora due to the Famine of Mount Lebanon and to a lesser extent the Lebanese civil war; Syrians due to the Syrian civil war; and the Iranian diaspora which grew from half a million to 3.8 million between the 1979 revolution and 2019.

Christianity has a long and continuous history in Lebanon. Biblical scriptures show that Peter and Paul evangelized the Phoenicians, leading to the dawn of the ancient Patriarchate of Antioch. As such, Christianity in Lebanon is as old as the Christian faith itself. Christianity spread slowly in Lebanon due to pagans who resisted conversion, but it ultimately spread throughout the country. Even after centuries of living under Muslim Empires, Christianity remains the dominant faith of the Mount Lebanon region and has substantial communities elsewhere.

The Maronite Catholics and the Druze founded modern Lebanon in the nineteenth century, through a governing and social system known as the "Maronite-Druze dualism" in the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate. Lebanon has the second highest proportion of Christians of any Middle Eastern country (after Cyprus), estimated to be between 37% and 43%; Egypt and Syria are next, at roughly 10%. Lebanese Christians constitute the majority of the Lebanese diaspora worldwide.

The Lebanese people (Arabic: الشعب اللبناني / ALA-LC: ash-shaʻb al-Lubnānī, Lebanese Arabic pronunciation: [eʃˈʃæʕeb ellɪbˈneːne]) are the people inhabiting or originating from Lebanon. The term may also include those who had inhabited Mount Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains prior to the creation of the modern Lebanese state. The major religious groups among the Lebanese people within Lebanon are Shia Muslims (27%), Sunni Muslims (27%), Maronite Christians (21%), Greek Orthodox Christians (8%), Melkite Christians (5%), Druze (5%), Protestant Christians (1%). The largest contingent of Lebanese, however, comprise a diaspora in North America, South America, Europe, Australia and Africa, which is predominantly Maronite Christian.

As the relative proportion of the various sects is politically sensitive, Lebanon has not collected official census data on ethnic background since 1932 under the French Mandate. It is therefore difficult to have an exact demographic analysis of Lebanese society.The largest concentration of people with Lebanese ancestry may be in Brazil, having an estimated population of 5.8 to 7 million. However, it may be an exaggeration given that an official survey conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed that less than 1 million Brazilians claimed any Middle-Eastern origin. The Lebanese have always traveled the world, many of them settling permanently within the last two centuries.

Latin Americans (Spanish: Latinoamericanos; Portuguese: Latino-americanos; French: Latino-américains) are the citizens of Latin American countries (or people with cultural, ancestral or national origins in Latin America).

Latin American countries and their diasporas are multi-ethnic and multi-racial. Latin Americans are a pan-ethnicity consisting of people of different ethnic and national backgrounds. As a result, many Latin Americans do not take their nationality as an ethnicity, but identify themselves with a combination of their nationality, ethnicity and their ancestral origins. In addition to the indigenous population, Latin Americans include people with Old World ancestors who arrived since 1492. Latin America has the largest diasporas of Spaniards, Portuguese, Africans, Italians, Lebanese and Japanese in the world. The region also has large German (second largest after the United States), French, Palestinian (largest outside the Arab states), Chinese and Jewish diasporas.

Lebanese nationality law governs the acquisition, transmission and loss of Lebanese citizenship. Lebanese citizenship is the status of being a citizen of Lebanon and it can be obtained by birth or naturalization. Lebanese nationality is transmitted paternally (via father) (see Jus sanguinis). Therefore, a Lebanese man who holds Lebanese citizenship can automatically confer citizenship to his children and foreign wife (only if entered in the Civil Acts Register in the Republic of Lebanon). Under the current law, descendants of Lebanese emigrants can only receive citizenship from their father and women cannot pass on citizenship to their children or foreign spouses.

On 12 November 2015, the Parliament of Lebanon approved a draft law that would allow "foreigners of Lebanese origin to get citizenship." On 5 May 2016, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants Gebran Bassil announced the beginning of the implementation of citizenship law for Lebanese diaspora.

Lebanese Arabic (Arabic: عَرَبِيّ لُبْنَانِيّ ʿarabiyy lubnāniyy; autonym: ʿarabe lebnēne [ˈʕaɾabe ləbˈneːne]), or simply Lebanese (Arabic: لُبْنَانِيّ lubnāniyy; autonym: lebnēne [ləbˈneːne]), is a variety of Levantine Arabic, indigenous to and primarily spoken in Lebanon, with significant linguistic influences borrowed from other Middle Eastern and European languages. Due to multilingualism and pervasive diglossia among Lebanese people (a majority of the Lebanese people are bilingual or trilingual), it is not uncommon for Lebanese people to code-switch between or mix Lebanese Arabic, French, and English in their daily speech. It is also spoken among the Lebanese diaspora.

Lebanese Arabic is a descendant of the Arabic dialects introduced to the Levant and other Arabic dialects that were already spoken in other parts of the Levant in the 7th century AD, which gradually supplanted various indigenous Northwest Semitic languages to become the regional lingua franca. As a result of this prolonged process of language shift, Lebanese Arabic possesses a significant Aramaic substratum, along with later non-Semitic adstrate influences from Ottoman Turkish, French, and English. As a variety of Levantine Arabic, Lebanese Arabic is most closely related to Syrian Arabic and shares many innovations with Palestinian and Jordanian Arabic.