Thermal mobilities: heat stress and the right to the city amongst Phnom Penh’s climate vulnerable paratransit workers

As global temperatures rise, excess heat at work is becoming the norm, impacting nearly 2.4 billion workers worldwide, majorly informal labourers in the Global South. This paper investigates how climate change-driven heat exacerbates social and spatial exclusions for Phnom Penh’s paratransit workers, including tuk-tuk and motodop drivers, connecting their struggles to broader climate justice and precarity discourses. Using qualitative interviews, observations, and a longitudinal cohort study with physiological data collected through a stipend-based intervention for accessing cooled spaces, the study examines workers’ embodied experiences of heat stress and its impacts on their daily mobility and livelihoods. Extreme temperatures cause physical symptoms such as dizziness, swelling, and fatigue, prompting self-funded adaptations like vehicle modifications and cooling diets. Additionally, layered stigmas restrict access to shaded or air-conditioned urban spaces, intensifying inequalities. A quantitative component, using wearable devices to measure core temperatures, confirms that access to cool spaces reduces elevated body temperature duration by over 50%, highlighting the critical role of mobility and access norms. Drawing on these data to extend recent work on vital and therapeutic mobilities, the paper outlines the framework of ‘thermal mobilities’ as the socially and spatially structured movement through which heat is produced, distributed and embodied across and within bodies.