This study examines terrorism financing as a structurally embedded social phenomenon rather than a purely economic or security-related issue. We conceptualize it as a process generated within the relational dynamics of social fields, where material resources intersect with symbolic and cultural forms of capital. The article aims to uncover the social determinants that enable financing mechanisms to function and to interpret their ideological and cultural foundations within a broader theoretical framework. Methodologically, the analysis integrates P. Bourdieu’s theory of capitals and field, U. Beck’s concept of the “risk society,” and S. Žižek’s critical theory of ideology. Empirical evidence is drawn from financial monitoring data, official assessments of radicalization, and social media discourse in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian contexts. The findings suggest that terrorism financing operates through a stratified social logic. At the micro level, interpersonal trust and kinship networks become economically mobilized. At the meso level, religious and ethnic communities accumulate and circulate symbolic and ideological capital that reinforces group cohesion. At the macro level, transnational financial circuits acquire forms of social legitimacy that normalize and stabilize resource flows. We argue that these mechanisms reflect not only economic rationality but also embedded cultural and communicative infrastructures that sustain them over time. The study indicates that counter-terrorism strategies confined to financial surveillance remain insufficient. Effective policy requires engagement with the structural and ideological environments that reproduce enabling conditions. Reframing security governance through a sociologically informed paradigm therefore emerges as a necessary step toward more sustainable intervention.