For fifteen months, more than a thousand of Paris' illegal immigrants have been squatting wherever they can, staging a mass sit-in on pavements and in buildings around the city. They are demanding one thing: the regularisation of their papers.

Having been evicted by baton-wielding police from their last place near the Republique, they moved to an empty insurance company headquarters in the 18th, a neighbourhood described aptly by a friend as 'Africa headquarters'. It is probably the only place in the world you can find a shop selling music from Guinea Bissau next to a Congolese barber next to a shop selling calabash and kola nut from Mali.

Inside the building, 1300 west Africans sit day-in, day-out while the government tries to evict them. Far from the destitute conditions in which they live, they keep up the appearance of being high-spirited, enjoying card games and the tea-ceremony which passes time so well. There are three meals a day, and everyone is friendly, happy to be together.

But in every dark corner, there is someone sorting papers, trying to get enough evidence together to show they he has been in the country for six or eight years, even if illegally. A bill from a department store from May 2003, a Metro card from July 2001, a receipt for a telephone bought in 2007. If he is lucky, very lucky, he will be able to pass the rigorous tests that illegal immigrants have to go through to become legal.

I asked one man if it was better to live in this squat, knowing he could get arrested, jailed and deported any time he goes out, than living in Mali as a legal citizen. "Yes," he said. "Because at least while I am here there is a chance I will get my papers. Then I can work." And what would he do once he got his papers and a bit of work?

"Go back to Mali."

"I saw you this morning; I said to myself, that girl there is not from around here, she doesn't know where she is going. Do you want to come now and have a glass of bissap at my mother's restaurant? It's very nice, and you can try an African dish."

After a long afternoon at the illegal immigration sit-in in Paris I went for a stoll around the 18th district, Chateau Rouge and along Rue des Poissoniers. I wanted to see migrants living in the outside world, on the Paris streets, perhaps offer myself some sense of hope that those who live underground will one day become part of those who live above ground. But all I saw were swathes of Africans swarming around the Chinese and Arabs earnestly selling fish and herbs and plantain, and groups of armed police wandering amongst them, sticking out as much as I was. The till at the KFC at Chateau Rouge was ten-deep with west Africans, and the tables were littered with chicken bones, and everything was sweaty. It was like being in Lagos- the chaos and shouting. It felt so odd to look up at the attractive French buildings high above the cacophony of the streets and remember that we were in France.

At a wig shop I watched women with skin burned pink by bleaching creams come in and demand this wig and that hair-piece, the one with the purple underneath and the tight-cropped blonde one. I unthinkingly told one woman that the wig she was trying on suited her, though it wasn't true- I was just trying to fit in. The manequins modeling the wigs did not seem very black, even though I was the only white person I saw- except for the police- the entire time I was there.

It's been a long time since I spent any time in Elephant and Castle, a largely migrant area in south-east London, but I have rented a small desk space in an office in a cobbled street full of photographers and artists, and am now back there more often. M. also lives near there, and to celebrate being back in that area we met one evening and went the the Afghan restaurant around the corner for dinner.

M. knows everyone, because she is the kind of person who talks to people and isn't afraid of sticking out. She has been out of England a long time, which might explain it, and I like to think that I feel an affinity with her because of this. At the curry shop, all the men working there greeted her warmly as we both ordered spicy lamb curry, paratha bread and cauliflower and peas. I enjoyed eating with my hands, and helping myself to water from a jug kept in the drinks fridge. The toilet out the back was disgusting, but added to the sense that I was in a foreign land.

Perhaps I will feel more at home -or away from home- when I am living back in that area and am once more a minority.