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Support for the unemployed in Belgium has since 2004 been entrusted to a system covering all job-seekers under 50 years of age. It consists in a summons, analyses of the efforts made at finding a job, recommended actions, and a possible sanction. The plan confirms the change of reference that has taken place in public policy and the passage from guaranteed indemnity to activation and incitement. The meaning of a policy is built up by the system implemented and the discourses that accompany it. This article proposes a content analysis of politicians' and administrators' discourses on support for the unemployed. These discourses reveal first of all the new prescriptive norms of behavior for jobseekers. But they also carry more general representations of the role of the State, the effectiveness of Justice and its decisions, employment and acceptable forms of employment. As such, they reveal the hierarchy of political objectives between adaptation and flexibility of individuals, on one hand, and professional orientation and getting a job, on the other.