ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how questions of national identity/sexual identity are determined and negotiated for immigrant and refugee women. It highlights two important aspects of these boundary and border crossings: geography/place and language. Both are invaluable and central to understanding immigrant women's experiences in general and sexuality in particular. The chapter presents the data of interviews conducted with focus on their thoughts and feelings for groups and individuals. Interviews and focus groups have been taped, transcribed and analyzed following accepted techniques for the analysis of qualitative data. The chapter illustrates some of the participants' life stories. Maritza and Olga are both Cuban. Both migrated to the USA when they were twenty-two years of age, during the 1970s. Olga comes from a middle-class family, Maritza from a poor working-class family. For both of these women, clearly their migration offered certain freedoms that fostered the development of a lesbian life. Their shared experience is the link between migration and sexual self-expression.
