Racialised Conditional Capital Conversion: Race, Class and the Limits of Recognition in Elite Organisations

Abstract

This paper examines how racial inequality persists within organisations alongside career advancement among racialised professionals. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with fifty Chinese professionals in Australia's Big Four firms, we examine how race shapes the recognition and conversion of economic, cultural and social capital in White‐dominant organisations. Participants possessed substantial resources that enabled entry, mobility and strategic action, yet those resources did not convert on equivalent terms. Their capital could be dismissed, discounted or confined. We conceptualise this process as racialised conditional capital conversion and identify five mechanisms operating across micro, meso and macro levels. The analysis shows that racialisation need not prevent capital conversion or professional advancement altogether. Instead, it can shape the rates, routes and limits through which capital is recognised and valued. By theorising conditional conversion, the study extends Bourdieusian accounts of capital and explains how mobility and racial inequality can coexist within elite organisations.