Origins of Falkland Islanders - Post-Falklands War

Post-Falklands War

Having shrunk as low as 1,813 in 1980, since the Falklands War the number of Falkland Islanders has been steadily increasing to exceed 3,100 in 2007. That new growth was supported by a thriving economy, with wool monoculture giving way to a more diversified agriculture, fisheries and tourism, augmented with services related to the military garrison as well as to the islands' role as one of the major gateways to neighbouring Antarctica. According to the 2001 census, the people who have settled in the Falklands during the last decade originated from the United Kingdom (30 per cent of the entire population excepting those resident in connection with the military garrison, including however some children born abroad to Falklander parents), Saint Helena and Ascension Island (6 per cent; 15.8 per cent if people resident in connection with the military garrison were included, Chile (3 per cent), Australia and New Zealand (2.3 per cent), Argentina (1 per cent), followed by Russia, Germany, with minor contributions by several dozens other nations from six continents. It should be noted that children born abroad to Falkland Island women were enumerated in the 2001 census as being "Foreign-born".

Some Falkland Islanders were even born beyond the Antarctic Convergence, most recently in the 1980s in the territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.