The recently developed sociological concept of superdiversity provides a potentially interesting and useful way of developing an understanding of life in contemporary Europe. Here we report on research based on individual narratives about access to health care, as described by a range of people from very different sociocultural backgrounds in four European countries. This article notes the frequent appearance in first-person narratives of the need for navigational assistance in the form of knowledge, cultural competence and orientation that facilitate the identification and use of pathways to health care. Our dataset of 24 semi-structured interviews suggests that, in the context of needing health care, the
feeling of being a ‘stranger in a strange land’ is common in people from a wide  range of backgrounds. In social settings characterised by transnationalism and cultural heterogeneity, it is important to understand the need for navigational assistance, particularly at times of uncertainty, in the design and delivery of health services. The relationship between the inhabitants of contemporary Europe and the healthcare systems available in the places where they live is dominated by both complexity and contingency – and this is the cultural field in which navigation operates.

"How can we understand health-seeking behaviour, if the space in which this behaviour takes place stretches across borders? Is there more happening than just the increase in options? Based on examples from research on reproductive travels, medical remittances, the circulation of medicines in migrants’ personal networks, and the revitalisation of local healing traditions through globally active NGOs, in this working paper we attempt to elaborate upon medical practices and therapeutic itineraries in a transnational framework. By looking at how people take advantage of different regulations and procedures in different national frameworks, we propose to think along the lines of therapeutic opportunity structures in order to bring in spatial theory as well as draw attention to new forms of exclusion and agency.

Key words: transnational spaces, therapeutic itineraries, health-seeking behaviour, reproductive travel, traditional medicine in India, medical remittances, medical travel, medical mobility, medicoscapes, reproscapes "