As we see in the current day, millions of refugees on the one hand and an ongoing brutal occupation on the other is anything but mutually exclusive, so that's my headcanon as well. The one hitch is the "kicked off their own planet" phrasing, which implies more a Rohingya situation and at any rate a conscious policy on the part of the Cardassians to drive the Bajorans away as opposed to exploit their workforce to death. Then again, 60 (or 40) years is a long time, and it's possible Cardassian policy changed repeatedly. Maybe the initial idea was something like the European settlement of Northern America, especially given that Cardassia went through a period of misery and near starvation within Gul Mardred's life time, which implies, depending on how old he's supposed to be in "Chain of Command", well, 60 years ago at the max. So the initial idea was complete colonization to regain wealth, except for some reason there weren't enough Cardassians willing to actually settle down on Bajor (as opposed to occupying it and let the Bajorans do the work), so the policy changed to keeping the Bajorans on Bajor in order to do the work and Keep the troops plus some administration there, but no large scale resettlement anymore?