List of Diasporas - L

L

• Lebanese diaspora - An estimated 15-16 million Lebanese live worldwide. Over half of the country's population are of Muslim faith and the rest are Christians. Lebanese are found in over 150 countries, the largest known Lebanese community is in the Brazil, U.S. followed by Canada; and Australia, where Lebanese immigration has occurred in large numbers since the civil war. Although there are millions of Lebanese descendants in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America, the Lebanese are also present in much of the continental span of Africa.
• Lithuanian diaspora - the majority of post-WWII Lithuanians live in North America (Canada and the United States) and across Europe (France, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Sweden, Netherlands and England), but are scattered across Russia and the former USSR, and smaller numbers in Mexico and Brazil. The Lithuanians and their ethnological kin, the Latvians may be the oldest Indo-European speaking peoples known and may resided in the Baltic states for 5,000 years. Between 1880 and 1910, over 40,000 Lithuanian Jews immigrated to South Africa to avoid persecuation. To date around 80% of the 75,000 Jews in South Africa (around 60,000) are of Lithuanian descent.
  • Litvins in northern Belarus and westernmost Russia of ethnic Lithuanian and Baltic origin.
• Latvian diaspora - the majority of Latvians whom left Latvia in WWII reside in North America (the US and Canada), across Europe mainly in Eastern countries and the former USSR with just as many in Western Europe and Scandinavian nations, and the rest in former Latvian lands in the Baltic states (Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Belarus). The most Russified of the three Baltic states, Latvia struggles with the issue of national identity after one million ethnic Russians and other Russian speaking people settled there since 1940.
  • Latgalians, a predominantly Catholic people in eastern Latvia in the region of Latgale and have a close history with Lithuania, due to differences in church denomination between them and Latvians who are a majority Lutheran along with Estonians not ethnically related to Latvians and Lithuanians.