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This paper focuses on the diversity in patients' experience of biomedicine and contrasts it with the normative view characteristic of health professionals. Ethnographic fieldwork among Polish migrant women in London, Barcelona and Berlin included interviews about their experiences with local healthcare and health professionals. Themes drawn from the narratives are differences between the cities in terms of communication between patients and health professionals, respect for patients' choices and dignity, attitudes to pregnancy and birth (different levels of medicalization), and paediatric care. It is argued that patients continuously negotiate among their own views and expectations based on previous experiences and knowledge from personal communication; internet forums and publications; and the offer of medical services in the countries of their settlement. Patients experience pluralism of therapeutic traditions within and outside bio-medicine. In turn, representatives of bio-medicine are rarely aware of other medical practices and beliefs and this leads to various misunderstandings. By highlighting the pluralism of medical practices in European countries and the increasing mobility of patients, this case study has useful implications for medical anthropologists and health professionals in a broader Western context, such as raising sensitivity to different communication strategies and a diversity of curing traditions and expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Experience of certain material deprivation pattern varies significantly across the world. • Children from Europe have almost no likelihood of belonging to the Extreme Deprivation class. • Children living in MENA are more likely to experience housing and mobile deprivation. • Children living in Africa are more likely to experience lack of access to digital resources in addition to deficit of basic necessities. • Children living in Eastern Europe are more likely to experience transportation deprivation. Current research suggests that poverty affects children at different rates across the world (OECD, 2018; Unicef Innocenti Research Center, 2007). Additionally, poverty affects children differently – from deprivation of basic needs (ex. lack of food, clothing) to lack of access to digital technology. Previous studies of child poverty and its impact on children have predominantly approached this topic using income-based measures of poverty. This paper employs a material deprivation approach to study child poverty in different cultural contexts. Therefore, this study answers the following questions: Does child material deprivation have different patterns across world regions? If so, what characteristics do these patterns of material deprivation have? Are these patterns of material deprivation more likely to affect certain world regions? This paper utilizes data from the International Survey of Child Well-Being. The data includes children at the age of 12 from Norway, Germany, England, Spain, Malta, Estonia, Romania, Algeria, Israel, Turkey, Ethiopia, and South Africa. The analyses were based on the items available in the Child Material Resource Index. Latent class analysis and multinomial logistic regression were utilized to explore patterns of material deprivation. Findings suggest five patterns of child material deprivation, ranging from extreme to no deprivation. The distribution of these patterns varies significantly across world regions. This study suggests that the distribution of resources to eliminate poverty should be based not only on income-based indicators but should also include an assessment based on perceived deprivation scales, especially in international contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies the relation between different national cost-sharing models and how students from different socio-economic backgrounds finance their higher education in six different European countries: the Czech Republic, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Spain. The findings reveal considerable differences both between the countries and also between different socio-economic groups of students within each country. Even though there are only small social differences in the students' level of income, there are considerable social differences in the students' sources of income. The findings are discussed related to the country's specific policy and higher education funding structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]