The reference to pain, lack of counterpart to social aid and abuse of solidarity systems is repeated in the political, economic and social discourse of recent decades. We will draw on the 4th edition of the European Social Survey (2008) and the Perception des Inegalities et sentiments de justice (2010-2011) to highlight the role of the reference to abuse of social assistance in the individual representations of social justice and the concepts of social cohesion in France. We will show that the understanding of these deviating and stigmatised behaviours as such plays a central role in the individual importance attributed to the structures of the social state and is a constituent part of contemporary conceptions of social justice, within the national framework. I would point out how often they are based on moral reasons or beliefs of principle rather than on economic arguments.