This article studies the hypothesis of "concentrated deconcentration", which posits that the loss of demographic and economic gravitation of metropolitan areas is due to short-distance internal migratory movements, which can expand their hinterland and their functional relationships, maintaining or even reinforcing its importance within the national urban system. To verify this hypothesis, a methodological proposal is offered that operationalizes the concept of concentrated deconcentration by using two analytical dimensions: i) relative weight of the metropolitan area in the total population and in the urban population of the country, and ii) movements of recent internal migration between the metropolitan area and its near and far environments. This proposal applies to five metropolitan areas in Latin America. The results suggest that the change in the territorial distribution of the population is diverse, since in some cases there is no loss of the demographic weight of the big city, while in others this loss is reduced, or in others there are signs of deconcentration. concentrated.