Jewish shepherds at the time of Christ were not able to leave their sheep in order to participate in obligatory pilgrimages to the temple in Jerusalem, besides being too poor to afford the required sacrifices.
Because they didn’t fulfill these requirements, they were rejected by the Jewish people.
They lived in the country with their sheep, sheltering at night in caves and sleeping at the entrance so as to guard the sheep from predators or thieves. (Thus Jesus describes himself as “the sheepgate”.)
It is highly unlikely that a respectable Jew would have accepted these shepherds into his home to see the newborn Jesus, so, if the shepherds visited, it was unlikely that Christ was sheltered in a home.
From the beginning the Word Incarnate was rejected by his own people and he extended hospitality to the outcasts.
I haven't studied shepherds in general but from other studies I know that the very strictest of the Jews (Pharisee's, Scribe, etc.) were a relatively small proportion of the population. One of the big biblical themes and a big message of Christ was how much the religious elite had hijacked God. How their religion had become too dependent upon manmade traditions and exclusionary conduct which of course was hypocritical to begin with.
The possibility that the king of the jews would be born in peasants home and the message spread by shepherds would have been difficult for the elitists to believe. And of course this is seen in the gospels.
So yeah, I agree with the caveat that "outcast" in perspective meant those who weren't part of the so called standard, orthodox, traditional religion of the day.