Historical and political processes have shaped the construction of the most relevant social identities in Chile. In this chapter, we will discuss how these processes have been related to the development of meaningful social identities in the Chilean society and how their structure, experiences of threats and the nature of their intergroup relations can be seen as relevant factors associated to the development of confl ict between the groups involved. Specifi cally, drawing on social identity theory (SIT; Tajfel & turner, 1986 ), we will analyse fi ve social identities across different contexts: ethnic identities, national identity in the context of immigration, political identities, gender identities, and social class identities. For each of these, we describe the historical background that gave rise to status and power differences, the nature of their intergroup relations, the social confl icts that emerge among the groups involved, threats to social identity, as well as out-group derogation.We seek to contribute to the integration of historical and contextual perspectives with socio-psychological theories to better understand the development of social identities and confl icts. Psychology has focused on psychological factors (e.g. the way we perceive the social world and the way we think and feel about others and ourselves) to explain human behaviour. However, the social identities and related confl icts we analyse in the Chilean context have been heavily infl uenced by historical and political contextual factors (social confl ict, ideologies and social change forces) that are often disregarded in social psychology. Indeed, we argue that sociopolitical contexts normally shape the psychological functioning of human beings (e.g. social identities). This infl uence in turn, motivates several psychological processes that contribute to maintaining the status quo, group differences and power relations that