According with the Census of Population and Housing of Philippines 2010, the number of internal migrants between 2005 and 2010 was 2.9 million of persons, which have moved towards to the major urban centers of the country, such as Metro Manila, Cebu and Davao, but also this pattern of migration has influenced the growth of medium and small towns, and peri-urban areas. Migration as well as the development and growth of urban settlements need to be managed and planned, to make use of the full potential of migration for the development. However and effective management of internal migration needs proper and relevant statistical data. Adequate information and data will allow a better understanding of the internal migration dynamics and needs of the migrants, and thereby for the design of appropriate strategies and policies.
In the Philippines some researches and studies on internal migration have been conducted and published in the between the seventies and nineties, which took as a method of study the calculation of the Net Migration Rate and the analysis of information obtained by the censuses. Although these studies are important contributions to the historic analysis of the patterns of migration within the Philippines, they are already dated and they neglected to study the determinants of migration, why individuals and families decide to leave their current residence and start a new live elsewhere. There is a need to address the current gap on information about the mobilization of people inside of the country.
Therefore this study was designed to analyze the dynamics of these movements within the Philippine territory. The principal objective of this research is to identify the drivers and patterns of the internal migration, and to define the socio-demographic characteristics of the migrants, by studying the case of the emerging city of Cagayan de Oro in Mindanao.